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+
+
+E-text prepared by Glynn Burleson
+and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+SIXES AND SEVENS
+
+by
+
+O. HENRY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       I. THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS
+      II. THE SLEUTHS
+     III. WITCHES' LOAVES
+      IV. THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES
+       V. HOLDING UP A TRAIN
+      VI. ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN
+     VII. THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER
+    VIII. MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
+      IX. AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS
+       X. A GHOST OF A CHANCE
+      XI. JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL
+     XII. THE DOOR OF UNREST
+    XIII. THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES
+     XIV. LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE
+      XV. OCTOBER AND JUNE
+     XVI. THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL
+    XVII. NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT
+   XVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES
+     XIX. THE LADY HIGHER UP
+      XX. THE GREATER CONEY
+     XXI. LAW AND ORDER
+    XXII. TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY
+   XXIII. THE CALIPH AND THE CAD
+    XXIV. THE DIAMOND OF KALI
+     XXV. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS
+
+
+Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the
+Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months' visit. It is not to be
+expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits
+yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon,
+the big <DW64> man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits.
+Once before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been
+forced to fly from his _cuisine_, after only a six-weeks' sojourn.
+
+On Sam's face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and
+slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who
+cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his
+saddle-cinches, looped his stake-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn,
+tied his slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his
+right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men,
+women, children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employes, dogs, and
+casual callers were grouped in the "gallery" of the ranch house, all
+with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming
+of Sam Galloway to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio
+or Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning and
+distress.
+
+And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind
+elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and
+carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and
+coat. The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the
+significance of it, it explains Sam.
+
+Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know about
+the troubadours. The encyclopaedia says they flourished between the
+eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished doesn't
+seem clear--you may be pretty sure it wasn't a sword: maybe it was a
+fiddlebow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a lady's scarf. Anyhow, Sam
+Galloway was one of 'em.
+
+Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the
+expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his
+pony's. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is
+not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had
+often guyed Sam's pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of
+by a rollicking, cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his
+saddle-horse. And even an escalator in a department store might be
+excused for tripping up a troubadour.
+
+Oh, I know I'm one; and so are you. You remember the stories you
+memorize and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the
+piano--how does it go?--ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum--those little Arabian Ten
+Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your
+rich Aunt Jane. You should know that _omnae personae in tres partes
+divisae sunt_. Namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no
+inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time:
+so I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam
+Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we
+are only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.
+
+The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of
+Sam's knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles southeastward.
+Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league of
+delicate, sweet flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating
+prairie. The east wind tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds
+flying in from the Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April
+sun. Sam sang songs as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked
+some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned,
+the long-faced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and,
+judging by his countenance, seemed to think of Beatrice.
+
+Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of old
+man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just
+then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument,
+competition, confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon
+old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he
+would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The
+Workers in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron
+sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies
+smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers
+bring boars' heads and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his
+carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.
+
+Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often
+heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been
+complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour
+for his own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison
+was the Last of the Barons. Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too
+early to know him, or he wouldn't have conferred that sobriquet
+upon Warwick. In life it is the duty and the function of the Baron
+to provide work for the Workers and lodging and shelter for the
+Troubadours.
+
+Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white
+beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch
+was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the
+lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a
+Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed
+coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran
+on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither
+leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his
+language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with
+him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what
+illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have
+been written the day on which a troubadour--a troubadour who,
+according to the encyclopaedia, should have flourished between the
+eleventh and the thirteenth centuries--drew rein at the gates of his
+baronial castle!
+
+Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he
+saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to
+greet him.
+
+"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over
+and see you a while. Notice you've had fine rains on your range. They
+ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."
+
+"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see
+you, Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to
+as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome.
+'Light. I've got a sack of new oats in the kitchen--shall I bring out
+a feed for your hoss?"
+
+"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a
+pig now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition.
+I'll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you
+don't mind."
+
+I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries
+did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their
+parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The
+Kiowa's biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong.
+Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's
+weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that
+he had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant
+meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight
+far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere
+that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him
+a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his
+tours of the ranches.
+
+After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took
+out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you--neither Sam Galloway
+nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the
+late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the
+esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his
+supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper,
+and then sing for Art's sake.
+
+Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and
+between thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could
+talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And
+he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could
+sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a
+portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will
+allow.
+
+I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and
+inactive beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an
+ultramarine-blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray,
+exaggerated sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes,
+inevitable high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw
+sombrero.
+
+That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under
+the hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour
+gaily touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird,
+melancholy, minor-keyed _canciones_ that he had learned from the
+Mexican sheep herders and _vaqueros_. One, in particular, charmed and
+soothed the soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the
+sheep herders, beginning: "_Huile, huile, palomita_," which being
+translated means, "Fly, fly, little dove." Sam sang it for old man
+Ellison many times that evening.
+
+The troubadour stayed on at the old man's ranch. There was peace and
+quiet and appreciation there, such as he had not found in the noisy
+camps of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have crowned
+the work of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and
+unflagging approval than that bestowed upon his efforts by old man
+Ellison. No visit by a royal personage to a humble woodchopper or
+peasant could have been received with more flattering thankfulness and
+joy.
+
+On a cool, canvas-covered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees Sam
+Galloway passed the greater part of his time. There he rolled his
+brown paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch
+afforded, and added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played
+so expertly on his guitar. To him, as a slave ministering to a great
+lord, the Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the
+brush shelter, and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs
+fanned him mildly; mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but
+scarce equalled the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness
+seemed to fill all his world. While old man Ellison was pottering
+among his flocks of sheep on his mile-an-hour pony, and while the
+Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine at the end of the
+kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking what a happy world he lived
+in, and how kind it is to the ones whose mission in life it is to give
+entertainment and pleasure. Here he had food and lodging as good as
+he had ever longed for; absolute immunity from care or exertion or
+strife; an endless welcome, and a host whose delight at the sixteenth
+repetition of a song or a story was as keen as at its initial giving.
+Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a castle
+in his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings,
+little brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey
+of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty
+yards away; a _paisano_ bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop
+upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long
+tail. In the eighty-acre horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque
+face grew fat and almost smiling. The troubadour was at the end of his
+wanderings.
+
+Old man Ellison was his own _vaciero_. That means that he supplied his
+sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own labours instead
+of hiring a _vaciero_. On small ranches it is often done.
+
+One morning he started for the camp of Incarnacion Felipe de la Cruz y
+Monte Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the week's usual rations
+of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the trail
+from old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King
+James, mounted on a fiery, prancing, Kentucky-bred horse.
+
+King James's real name was James King; but people reversed it because
+it seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please his
+majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo plaza
+in San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he was the
+loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in southwest
+Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and the more noise
+he made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers it is always
+the quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and a low voice who
+turns out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in this story
+such is not the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a large,
+loudmouthed rough-houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue eyes
+sitting quietly in a corner, and you will see something doing in the
+corner every time.
+
+King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce,
+two-hundred-pound, sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October
+strawberry, and with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows
+for eyes. On that day he wore a flannel shirt that was tan-,
+with the exception of certain large areas which were darkened by
+transudations due to the summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing
+and garnishings about him, such as brown duck trousers stuffed into
+immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shotgun
+laid across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of cartridges
+shining in it--but your mind skidded off such accessories; what held
+your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used for
+eyes.
+
+This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when you
+count up in the baron's favour that he was sixty-five and weighed
+ninety-eight pounds and had heard of King James's record and that he
+(the baron) had a hankering for the _vita simplex_ and had no gun with
+him and wouldn't have used it if he had, you can't censure him if I
+tell you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his
+wrinkles went out of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he
+was not the kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined in the
+mile-an-hour pony (no difficult feat), and saluted the formidable
+monarch.
+
+King James expressed himself with royal directness. "You're that old
+snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't you?" said he. "What
+right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?"
+
+"I have two sections leased from the state," said old man Ellison,
+mildly.
+
+"Not by no means you haven't," said King James. "Your lease expired
+yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take it
+up. You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got
+to git. Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any
+room in it for snoozers. This range you've got your sheep on is mine.
+I'm putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a
+sheep inside of it when it's done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a
+week to move yours away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men
+over here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if
+I find you here at the same time this is what you'll get."
+
+King James patted the breech of his shot-gun warningly.
+
+Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnacion. He sighed many
+times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumours that the
+old order was about to change had reached him before. The end of
+Free Grass was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating
+upon his shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing;
+the price of wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the
+storekeeper at Frio City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies,
+was dunning him for his last six months' bill and threatening to cut
+him off. And so this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him
+by the terrible King James was a crusher.
+
+When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam Galloway
+lying on his cot, propped against a roll of blankets and wool sacks,
+fingering his guitar.
+
+"Hello, Uncle Ben," the troubadour called, cheerfully. "You rolled in
+early this evening. I been trying a new twist on the Spanish Fandango
+to-day. I just about got it. Here's how she goes--listen."
+
+"That's fine, that's mighty fine," said old man Ellison, sitting on
+the kitchen step and rubbing his white, Scotch-terrier whiskers. "I
+reckon you've got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far
+as the roads are cut out."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Sam, reflectively. "But I certainly do get
+there on variations. I guess I can handle anything in five flats
+about as well as any of 'em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle
+Ben--ain't you feeling right well this evening?"
+
+"Little tired; that's all, Sam. If you ain't played yourself out,
+let's have that Mexican piece that starts off with: '_Huile, huile,
+palomita_.' It seems that that song always kind of soothes and
+comforts me after I've been riding far or anything bothers me."
+
+"Why, _seguramente, senor_," said Sam. "I'll hit her up for you as
+often as you like. And before I forget about it, Uncle Ben, you want
+to jerk Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They're just a
+little bit strong."
+
+A man sixty-five years old, living on a sheep ranch and beset by
+a complication of disasters, cannot successfully and continuously
+dissemble. Moreover, a troubadour has eyes quick to see unhappiness in
+others around him--because it disturbs his own ease. So, on the next
+day, Sam again questioned the old man about his air of sadness and
+abstraction. Then old man Ellison told him the story of King James's
+threats and orders and that pale melancholy and red ruin appeared
+to have marked him for their own. The troubadour took the news
+thoughtfully. He had heard much about King James.
+
+On the third day of the seven days of grace allowed him by the
+autocrat of the range, old man Ellison drove his buckboard to Frio
+City to fetch some necessary supplies for the ranch. Bradshaw was hard
+but not implacable. He divided the old man's order by two, and let him
+have a little more time. One article secured was a new, fine ham for
+the pleasure of the troubadour.
+
+Five miles out of Frio City on his way home the old man met King James
+riding into town. His majesty could never look anything but fierce and
+menacing, but to-day his slits of eyes appeared to be a little wider
+than they usually were.
+
+"Good day," said the king, gruffly. "I've been wanting to see you.
+I hear it said by a cowman from Sandy yesterday that you was from
+Jackson County, Mississippi, originally. I want to know if that's a
+fact."
+
+"Born there," said old man Ellison, "and raised there till I was
+twenty-one."
+
+"This man says," went on King James, "that he thinks you was related
+to the Jackson County Reeveses. Was he right?"
+
+"Aunt Caroline Reeves," said the old man, "was my half-sister."
+
+"She was my aunt," said King James. "I run away from home when I was
+sixteen. Now, let's re-talk over some things that we discussed a few
+days ago. They call me a bad man; and they're only half right. There's
+plenty of room in my pasture for your bunch of sheep and their
+increase for a long time to come. Aunt Caroline used to cut out sheep
+in cake dough and bake 'em for me. You keep your sheep where they are,
+and use all the range you want. How's your finances?"
+
+The old man related his woes in detail, dignifiedly, with restraint
+and candour.
+
+"She used to smuggle extra grub into my school basket--I'm speaking of
+Aunt Caroline," said King James. "I'm going over to Frio City to-day,
+and I'll ride back by your ranch to-morrow. I'll draw $2,000 out of
+the bank there and bring it over to you; and I'll tell Bradshaw to let
+you have everything you want on credit. You are bound to have heard
+the old saying at home, that the Jackson County Reeveses and Kings
+would stick closer by each other than chestnut burrs. Well, I'm a
+King yet whenever I run across a Reeves. So you look out for me along
+about sundown to-morrow, and don't worry about nothing. Shouldn't
+wonder if the dry spell don't kill out the young grass."
+
+Old man Ellison drove happily ranchward. Once more the smiles filled
+out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by the magic of kinship and the good
+that lies somewhere in all hearts, his troubles had been removed.
+
+On reaching the ranch he found that Sam Galloway was not there. His
+guitar hung by its buckskin string to a hackberry limb, moaning as the
+gulf breeze blew across its masterless strings.
+
+The Kiowa endeavoured to explain.
+
+"Sam, he catch pony," said he, "and say he ride to Frio City. What for
+no can damn sabe. Say he come back to-night. Maybe so. That all."
+
+As the first stars came out the troubadour rode back to his haven. He
+pastured his pony and went into the house, his spurs jingling
+martially.
+
+Old man Ellison sat at the kitchen table, having a tin cup of
+before-supper coffee. He looked contented and pleased.
+
+"Hello, Sam," said he. "I'm darned glad to see ye back. I don't know
+how I managed to get along on this ranch, anyhow, before ye dropped in
+to cheer things up. I'll bet ye've been skylarking around with some of
+them Frio City gals, now, that's kept ye so late."
+
+And then old man Ellison took another look at Sam's face and saw that
+the minstrel had changed to the man of action.
+
+And while Sam is unbuckling from his waist old man Ellison's
+six-shooter, that the latter had left behind when he drove to town, we
+may well pause to remark that anywhere and whenever a troubadour lays
+down the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow. It
+is not the expert thrust of Athos nor the cold skill of Aramis nor
+the iron wrist of Porthos that we have to fear--it is the Gascon's
+fury--the wild and unacademic attack of the troubadour--the sword of
+D'Artagnan.
+
+"I done it," said Sam. "I went over to Frio City to do it. I couldn't
+let him put the skibunk on you, Uncle Ben. I met him in Summers's
+saloon. I knowed what to do. I said a few things to him that nobody
+else heard. He reached for his gun first--half a dozen fellows saw him
+do it--but I got mine unlimbered first. Three doses I gave him--right
+around the lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of 'em. He
+won't bother you no more."
+
+"This--is--King--James--you speak--of?" asked old man Ellison, while
+he sipped his coffee.
+
+"You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the
+witnesses what saw him draw his gun first was all there. Well, of
+course, they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but
+there was four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He
+won't bother you no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to have seen how close
+them bullet holes was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as
+I do must kind of limber a fellow's trigger finger up a little, don't
+you think, Uncle Ben?"
+
+Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the
+spluttering of a venison steak that the Kiowa was cooking.
+
+"Sam," said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a
+tremulous hand, "would you mind getting the guitar and playing that
+'_Huile, huile, palomita_' piece once or twice? It always seems to be
+kind of soothing and comforting when a man's tired and fagged out."
+
+There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is
+wrong. It should have been called "The Last of the Barons." There
+never will be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem
+that the jingle of their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled
+blows of the pickaxes and trip hammers of all the Workers in the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SLEUTHS
+
+
+In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and
+completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the
+agencies of inquisition--the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the
+city's labyrinths, the closet detectives of theory and induction--will
+be invoked to the search. Most often the man's face will be seen no
+more. Sometimes he will reappear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre
+Haute, calling himself one of the synonyms of "Smith," and without
+memory of events up to a certain time, including his grocer's bill.
+Sometimes it will be found, after dragging the rivers, and polling the
+restaurants to see if he may be waiting for a well-done sirloin, that
+he has moved next door.
+
+This snuffing out of a human being like the erasure of a chalk man
+from a blackboard is one of the most impressive themes in dramaturgy.
+
+The case of Mary Snyder, in point, should not be without interest.
+
+A man of middle age, of the name of Meeks, came from the West to New
+York to find his sister, Mrs. Mary Snyder, a widow, aged fifty-two,
+who had been living for a year in a tenement house in a crowded
+neighbourhood.
+
+At her address he was told that Mary Snyder had moved away longer than
+a month before. No one could tell him her new address.
+
+On coming out Mr. Meeks addressed a policeman who was standing on the
+corner, and explained his dilemma.
+
+"My sister is very poor," he said, "and I am anxious to find her. I
+have recently made quite a lot of money in a lead mine, and I want her
+to share my prosperity. There is no use in advertising her, because
+she cannot read."
+
+The policeman pulled his moustache and looked so thoughtful and mighty
+that Meeks could almost feel the joyful tears of his sister Mary
+dropping upon his bright blue tie.
+
+"You go down in the Canal Street neighbourhood," said the policeman,
+"and get a job drivin' the biggest dray you can find. There's old
+women always gettin' knocked over by drays down there. You might see
+'er among 'em. If you don't want to do that you better go 'round to
+headquarters and get 'em to put a fly cop onto the dame."
+
+At police headquarters, Meeks received ready assistance. A general
+alarm was sent out, and copies of a photograph of Mary Snyder that her
+brother had were distributed among the stations. In Mulberry Street
+the chief assigned Detective Mullins to the case.
+
+The detective took Meeks aside and said:
+
+"This is not a very difficult case to unravel. Shave off your
+whiskers, fill your pockets with good cigars, and meet me in the cafe
+of the Waldorf at three o'clock this afternoon."
+
+Meeks obeyed. He found Mullins there. They had a bottle of wine, while
+the detective asked questions concerning the missing woman.
+
+"Now," said Mullins, "New York is a big city, but we've got the
+detective business systematized. There are two ways we can go about
+finding your sister. We will try one of 'em first. You say she's
+fifty-two?"
+
+"A little past," said Meeks.
+
+The detective conducted the Westerner to a branch advertising office
+of one of the largest dailies. There he wrote the following "ad" and
+submitted it to Meeks:
+
+"Wanted, at once--one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new
+musical comedy. Apply all day at No. ---- Broadway."
+
+Meeks was indignant.
+
+"My sister," said he, "is a poor, hard-working, elderly woman. I do
+not see what aid an advertisement of this kind would be toward finding
+her."
+
+"All right," said the detective. "I guess you don't know New York. But
+if you've got a grouch against this scheme we'll try the other one.
+It's a sure thing. But it'll cost you more."
+
+"Never mind the expense," said Meeks; "we'll try it."
+
+The sleuth led him back to the Waldorf. "Engage a couple of bedrooms
+and a parlour," he advised, "and let's go up."
+
+This was done, and the two were shown to a superb suite on the fourth
+floor. Meeks looked puzzled. The detective sank into a velvet
+armchair, and pulled out his cigar case.
+
+"I forgot to suggest, old man," he said, "that you should have taken
+the rooms by the month. They wouldn't have stuck you so much for 'em.
+
+"By the month!" exclaimed Meeks. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, it'll take time to work the game this way. I told you it would
+cost you more. We'll have to wait till spring. There'll be a new city
+directory out then. Very likely your sister's name and address will be
+in it."
+
+Meeks rid himself of the city detective at once. On the next day some
+one advised him to consult Shamrock Jolnes, New York's famous private
+detective, who demanded fabulous fees, but performed miracles in the
+way of solving mysteries and crimes.
+
+After waiting for two hours in the anteroom of the great detective's
+apartment, Meeks was shown into his presence. Jolnes sat in a purple
+dressing-gown at an inlaid ivory chess table, with a magazine before
+him, trying to solve the mystery of "They." The famous sleuth's thin,
+intellectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per word are too well known
+to need description.
+
+Meeks set forth his errand. "My fee, if successful, will be $500,"
+said Shamrock Jolnes.
+
+Meeks bowed his agreement to the price.
+
+"I will undertake your case, Mr. Meeks," said Jolnes, finally. "The
+disappearance of people in this city has always been an interesting
+problem to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful
+outcome a year ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared
+suddenly from a small flat in which they were living. I watched the
+flat building for two months for a clue. One day it struck me that a
+certain milkman and a grocer's boy always walked backward when they
+carried their wares upstairs. Following out by induction the idea that
+this observation gave me, I at once located the missing family. They
+had moved into the flat across the hall and changed their name to
+Kralc."
+
+Shamrock Jolnes and his client went to the tenement house where Mary
+Snyder had lived, and the detective demanded to be shown the room in
+which she had lived. It had been occupied by no tenant since her
+disappearance.
+
+The room was small, dingy, and poorly furnished. Meeks seated himself
+dejectedly on a broken chair, while the great detective searched the
+walls and floor and the few sticks of old, rickety furniture for a
+clue.
+
+At the end of half an hour Jolnes had collected a few seemingly
+unintelligible articles--a cheap black hat pin, a piece torn off a
+theatre programme, and the end of a small torn card on which was the
+word "left" and the characters "C 12."
+
+Shamrock Jolnes leaned against the mantel for ten minutes, with his
+head resting upon his hand, and an absorbed look upon his intellectual
+face. At the end of that time he exclaimed, with animation:
+
+"Come, Mr. Meeks; the problem is solved. I can take you directly to
+the house where your sister is living. And you may have no fears
+concerning her welfare, for she is amply provided with funds--for the
+present at least."
+
+Meeks felt joy and wonder in equal proportions.
+
+"How did you manage it?" he asked, with admiration in his tones.
+
+Perhaps Jolnes's only weakness was a professional pride in his
+wonderful achievements in induction. He was ever ready to astound and
+charm his listeners by describing his methods.
+
+"By elimination," said Jolnes, spreading his clues upon a little
+table, "I got rid of certain parts of the city to which Mrs. Snyder
+might have removed. You see this hatpin? That eliminates Brooklyn. No
+woman attempts to board a car at the Brooklyn Bridge without being
+sure that she carries a hatpin with which to fight her way into a
+seat. And now I will demonstrate to you that she could not have gone
+to Harlem. Behind this door are two hooks in the wall. Upon one of
+these Mrs. Snyder has hung her bonnet, and upon the other her shawl.
+You will observe that the bottom of the hanging shawl has gradually
+made a soiled streak against the plastered wall. The mark is
+clean-cut, proving that there is no fringe on the shawl. Now, was
+there ever a case where a middle-aged woman, wearing a shawl, boarded
+a Harlem train without there being a fringe on the shawl to catch in
+the gate and delay the passengers behind her? So we eliminate Harlem.
+
+"Therefore I conclude that Mrs. Snyder has not moved very far away.
+On this torn piece of card you see the word 'Left,' the letter 'C,'
+and the number '12.' Now, I happen to know that No. 12 Avenue C is
+a first-class boarding house, far beyond your sister's means--as we
+suppose. But then I find this piece of a theatre programme, crumpled
+into an odd shape. What meaning does it convey. None to you, very
+likely, Mr. Meeks; but it is eloquent to one whose habits and training
+take cognizance of the smallest things.
+
+"You have told me that your sister was a scrub woman. She scrubbed the
+floors of offices and hallways. Let us assume that she procured such
+work to perform in a theatre. Where is valuable jewellery lost the
+oftenest, Mr. Meeks? In the theatres, of course. Look at that piece of
+programme, Mr. Meeks. Observe the round impression in it. It has been
+wrapped around a ring--perhaps a ring of great value. Mrs. Snyder
+found the ring while at work in the theatre. She hastily tore off a
+piece of a programme, wrapped the ring carefully, and thrust it into
+her bosom. The next day she disposed of it, and, with her increased
+means, looked about her for a more comfortable place in which to live.
+When I reach thus far in the chain I see nothing impossible about No.
+12 Avenue C. It is there we will find your sister, Mr. Meeks."
+
+Shamrock Jolnes concluded his convincing speech with the smile of
+a successful artist. Meeks's admiration was too great for words.
+Together they went to No. 12 Avenue C. It was an old-fashioned
+brownstone house in a prosperous and respectable neighbourhood.
+
+They rang the bell, and on inquiring were told that no Mrs. Snyder was
+known there, and that not within six months had a new occupant come to
+the house.
+
+When they reached the sidewalk again, Meeks examined the clues which
+he had brought away from his sister's old room.
+
+"I am no detective," he remarked to Jolnes as he raised the piece of
+theatre programme to his nose, "but it seems to me that instead of
+a ring having been wrapped in this paper it was one of those round
+peppermint drops. And this piece with the address on it looks to me
+like the end of a seat coupon--No. 12, row C, left aisle."
+
+Shamrock Jolnes had a far-away look in his eyes.
+
+"I think you would do well to consult Juggins," said he.
+
+"Who is Juggins?" asked Meeks.
+
+"He is the leader," said Jolnes, "of a new modern school of
+detectives. Their methods are different from ours, but it is said that
+Juggins has solved some extremely puzzling cases. I will take you to
+him."
+
+They found the greater Juggins in his office. He was a small man with
+light hair, deeply absorbed in reading one of the bourgeois works of
+Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+The two great detectives of different schools shook hands with
+ceremony, and Meeks was introduced.
+
+"State the facts," said Juggins, going on with his reading.
+
+When Meeks ceased, the greater one closed his book and said:
+
+"Do I understand that your sister is fifty-two years of age, with a
+large mole on the side of her nose, and that she is a very poor widow,
+making a scanty living by scrubbing, and with a very homely face and
+figure?"
+
+"That describes her exactly," admitted Meeks. Juggins rose and put on
+his hat.
+
+"In fifteen minutes," he said, "I will return, bringing you her
+present address."
+
+Shamrock Jolnes turned pale, but forced a smile.
+
+Within the specified time Juggins returned and consulted a little slip
+of paper held in his hand.
+
+"Your sister, Mary Snyder," he announced calmly, "will be found at
+No. 162 Chilton street. She is living in the back hall bedroom, five
+flights up. The house is only four blocks from here," he continued,
+addressing Meeks. "Suppose you go and verify the statement and then
+return here. Mr. Jolnes will await you, I dare say."
+
+Meeks hurried away. In twenty minutes he was back again, with a
+beaming face.
+
+"She is there and well!" he cried. "Name your fee!"
+
+"Two dollars," said Juggins.
+
+When Meeks had settled his bill and departed, Shamrock Jolnes stood
+with his hat in his hand before Juggins.
+
+"If it would not be asking too much," he stammered--"if you would
+favour me so far--would you object to--"
+
+"Certainly not," said Juggins pleasantly. "I will tell you how I did
+it. You remember the description of Mrs. Snyder? Did you ever know a
+woman like that who wasn't paying weekly instalments on an enlarged
+crayon portrait of herself? The biggest factory of that kind in the
+country is just around the corner. I went there and got her address
+off the books. That's all."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WITCHES' LOAVES
+
+
+Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one
+where you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the
+door).
+
+Miss Martha was forty, her bank-book showed a credit of two thousand
+dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart.
+Many people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to
+Miss Martha's.
+
+Two or three times a week a customer came in in whom she began to take
+an interest. He was a middle-aged man, wearing spectacles and a brown
+beard trimmed to a careful point.
+
+He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn
+and darned in places, and wrinkled and baggy in others. But he looked
+neat, and had very good manners.
+
+He always bought two loaves of stale bread. Fresh bread was five cents
+a loaf. Stale ones were two for five. Never did he call for anything
+but stale bread.
+
+Once Miss Martha saw a red and brown stain on his fingers. She was
+sure then that he was an artist and very poor. No doubt he lived in a
+garret, where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of
+the good things to eat in Miss Martha's bakery.
+
+Often when Miss Martha sat down to her chops and light rolls and jam
+and tea she would sigh, and wish that the gentle-mannered artist might
+share her tasty meal instead of eating his dry crust in that draughty
+attic. Miss Martha's heart, as you have been told, was a sympathetic
+one.
+
+In order to test her theory as to his occupation, she brought from
+her room one day a painting that she had bought at a sale, and set it
+against the shelves behind the bread counter.
+
+It was a Venetian scene. A splendid marble palazzio (so it said on the
+picture) stood in the foreground--or rather forewater. For the rest
+there were gondolas (with the lady trailing her hand in the water),
+clouds, sky, and chiaro-oscuro in plenty. No artist could fail to
+notice it.
+
+Two days afterward the customer came in.
+
+"Two loafs of stale bread, if you blease.
+
+"You haf here a fine bicture, madame," he said while she was wrapping
+up the bread.
+
+"Yes?" says Miss Martha, revelling in her own cunning. "I do so admire
+art and" (no, it would not do to say "artists" thus early) "and
+paintings," she substituted. "You think it is a good picture?"
+
+"Der balance," said the customer, "is not in good drawing. Der
+bairspective of it is not true. Goot morning, madame."
+
+He took his bread, bowed, and hurried out.
+
+Yes, he must be an artist. Miss Martha took the picture back to her
+room.
+
+How gentle and kindly his eyes shone behind his spectacles! What a
+broad brow he had! To be able to judge perspective at a glance--and
+to live on stale bread! But genius often has to struggle before it is
+recognized.
+
+What a thing it would be for art and perspective if genius were backed
+by two thousand dollars in bank, a bakery, and a sympathetic heart
+to-- But these were day-dreams, Miss Martha.
+
+Often now when he came he would chat for a while across the showcase.
+He seemed to crave Miss Martha's cheerful words.
+
+He kept on buying stale bread. Never a cake, never a pie, never one of
+her delicious Sally Lunns.
+
+She thought he began to look thinner and discouraged. Her heart ached
+to add something good to eat to his meagre purchase, but her courage
+failed at the act. She did not dare affront him. She knew the pride of
+artists.
+
+Miss Martha took to wearing her blue-dotted silk waist behind the
+counter. In the back room she cooked a mysterious compound of quince
+seeds and borax. Ever so many people use it for the complexion.
+
+One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the
+showcase, and called for his stale loaves. While Miss Martha was
+reaching for them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a
+fire-engine came lumbering past.
+
+The customer hurried to the door to look, as any one will. Suddenly
+inspired, Miss Martha seized the opportunity.
+
+On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter
+that the dairyman had left ten minutes before. With a bread knife
+Miss Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted
+a generous quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again.
+
+When the customer turned once more she was tying the paper around
+them.
+
+When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant little chat, Miss Martha
+smiled to herself, but not without a slight fluttering of the heart.
+
+Had she been too bold? Would he take offense? But surely not. There
+was no language of edibles. Butter was no emblem of unmaidenly
+forwardness.
+
+For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the subject. She imagined
+the scene when he should discover her little deception.
+
+He would lay down his brushes and palette. There would stand his easel
+with the picture he was painting in which the perspective was beyond
+criticism.
+
+He would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water. He would
+slice into a loaf--ah!
+
+Miss Martha blushed. Would he think of the hand that placed it there
+as he ate? Would he--
+
+The front door bell jangled viciously. Somebody was coming in, making
+a great deal of noise.
+
+Miss Martha hurried to the front. Two men were there. One was a young
+man smoking a pipe--a man she had never seen before. The other was her
+artist.
+
+His face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his
+hair was wildly rumpled. He clinched his two fists and shook them
+ferociously at Miss Martha. _At Miss Martha_.
+
+"_Dummkopf!_" he shouted with extreme loudness; and then
+"_Tausendonfer!_" or something like it in German.
+
+The young man tried to draw him away.
+
+"I vill not go," he said angrily, "else I shall told her."
+
+He made a bass drum of Miss Martha's counter.
+
+"You haf shpoilt me," he cried, his blue eyes blazing behind his
+spectacles. "I vill tell you. You vas von _meddingsome old cat!_"
+
+Miss Martha leaned weakly against the shelves and laid one hand on her
+blue-dotted silk waist. The young man took the other by the collar.
+
+"Come on," he said, "you've said enough." He dragged the angry one out
+at the door to the sidewalk, and then came back.
+
+"Guess you ought to be told, ma'am," he said, "what the row is about.
+That's Blumberger. He's an architectural draftsman. I work in the same
+office with him.
+
+"He's been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new
+city hall. It was a prize competition. He finished inking the lines
+yesterday. You know, a draftsman always makes his drawing in pencil
+first. When it's done he rubs out the pencil lines with handfuls of
+stale bread crumbs. That's better than India rubber.
+
+"Blumberger's been buying the bread here. Well, to-day--well, you
+know, ma'am, that butter isn't--well, Blumberger's plan isn't good for
+anything now except to cut up into railroad sandwiches."
+
+Miss Martha went into the back room. She took off the blue-dotted silk
+waist and put on the old brown serge she used to wear. Then she poured
+the quince seed and borax mixture out of the window into the ash can.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES
+
+
+Said Mr. Kipling, "The cities are full of pride, challenging each to
+each." Even so.
+
+New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away
+for the summer. Three million eight hundred thousand remained as
+caretakers and to pay the bills of the absentees. But the two hundred
+thousand are an expensive lot.
+
+The New Yorker sat at a roof-garden table, ingesting solace through a
+straw. His panama lay upon a chair. The July audience was scattered
+among vacant seats as widely as outfielders when the champion batter
+steps to the plate. Vaudeville happened at intervals. The breeze
+was cool from the bay; around and above--everywhere except on the
+stage--were stars. Glimpses were to be had of waiters, always
+disappearing, like startled chamois. Prudent visitors who had ordered
+refreshments by 'phone in the morning were now being served. The New
+Yorker was aware of certain drawbacks to his comfort, but content
+beamed softly from his rimless eyeglasses. His family was out of town.
+The drinks were warm; the ballet was suffering from lack of both tune
+and talcum--but his family would not return until September.
+
+Then up into the garden stumbled the man from Topaz City, Nevada. The
+gloom of the solitary sightseer enwrapped him. Bereft of joy through
+loneliness, he stalked with a widower's face through the halls of
+pleasure. Thirst for human companionship possessed him as he panted
+in the metropolitan draught. Straight to the New Yorker's table he
+steered.
+
+The New Yorker, disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmosphere
+of a roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life's
+traditions. He resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil,
+impulsive, hair-brained act the conventions that had hitherto been
+woven into his existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous
+inspiration he nodded slightly to the stranger as he drew nearer the
+table.
+
+The next moment found the man from Topaz City in the list of the New
+Yorker's closest friends. He took a chair at the table, he gathered
+two others for his feet, he tossed his broad-brimmed hat upon a
+fourth, and told his life's history to his new-found pard.
+
+The New Yorker warmed a little, as an apartment-house furnace warms
+when the strawberry season begins. A waiter who came within hail in an
+unguarded moment was captured and paroled on an errand to the Doctor
+Wiley experimental station. The ballet was now in the midst of a
+musical vagary, and danced upon the stage programmed as Bolivian
+peasants, clothed in some portions of its anatomy as Norwegian
+fisher maidens, in others as ladies-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette,
+historically denuded in other portions so as to represent sea nymphs,
+and presenting the _tout ensemble_ of a social club of Central Park
+West housemaids at a fish fry.
+
+"Been in the city long?" inquired the New Yorker, getting ready the
+exact tip against the waiter's coming with large change from the bill.
+
+"Me?" said the man from Topaz City. "Four days. Never in Topaz City,
+was you?"
+
+"I!" said the New Yorker. "I was never farther west than Eighth
+Avenue. I had a brother who died on Ninth, but I met the cortege at
+Eighth. There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker
+mentioned the incident to avoid mistake. I cannot say that I am
+familiar with the West."
+
+"Topaz City," said the man who occupied four chairs, "is one of the
+finest towns in the world."
+
+"I presume that you have seen the sights of the metropolis," said the
+New Yorker, "Four days is not a sufficient length of time in which to
+view even our most salient points of interest, but one can possibly
+form a general impression. Our architectural supremacy is what
+generally strikes visitors to our city most forcibly. Of course you
+have seen our Flatiron Building. It is considered--"
+
+"Saw it," said the man from Topaz City. "But you ought to come out our
+way. It's mountainous, you know, and the ladies all wear short skirts
+for climbing and--"
+
+"Excuse me," said the New Yorker, "but that isn't exactly the point.
+New York must be a wonderful revelation to a visitor from the West.
+Now, as to our hotels--"
+
+"Say," said the man from Topaz City, "that reminds me--there were
+sixteen stage robbers shot last year within twenty miles of--"
+
+"I was speaking of hotels," said the New Yorker. "We lead Europe in
+that respect. And as far as our leisure class is concerned we are
+far--"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," interrupted the man from Topaz City. "There were
+twelve tramps in our jail when I left home. I guess New York isn't
+so--"
+
+"Beg pardon, you seem to misapprehend the idea. Of course, you visited
+the Stock Exchange and Wall Street, where the--"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the man from Topaz City, as he lighted a Pennsylvania
+stogie, "and I want to tell you that we've got the finest town marshal
+west of the Rockies. Bill Rainer he took in five pickpockets out of
+the crowd when Red Nose Thompson laid the cornerstone of his new
+saloon. Topaz City don't allow--"
+
+"Have another Rhine wine and seltzer," suggested the New Yorker. "I've
+never been West, as I said; but there can't be any place out there to
+compare with New York. As to the claims of Chicago I--"
+
+"One man," said the Topazite--"one man only has been murdered and
+robbed in Topaz City in the last three--"
+
+"Oh, I know what Chicago is," interposed the New Yorker. "Have you
+been up Fifth Avenue to see the magnificent residences of our mil--"
+
+"Seen 'em all. You ought to know Reub Stegall, the assessor of Topaz.
+When old man Tilbury, that owns the only two-story house in town,
+tried to swear his taxes from $6,000 down to $450.75, Reub buckled on
+his forty-five and went down to see--"
+
+"Yes, yes, but speaking of our great city--one of its greatest
+features is our superb police department. There is no body of men in
+the world that can equal it for--"
+
+"That waiter gets around like a Langley flying machine," remarked the
+man from Topaz City, thirstily. "We've got men in our town, too, worth
+$400,000. There's old Bill Withers and Colonel Metcalf and--"
+
+"Have you seen Broadway at night?" asked the New Yorker, courteously.
+"There are few streets in the world that can compare with it. When the
+electrics are shining and the pavements are alive with two hurrying
+streams of elegantly clothed men and beautiful women attired in
+the costliest costumes that wind in and out in a close maze of
+expensively--"
+
+"Never knew but one case in Topaz City," said the man from the West.
+"Jim Bailey, our mayor, had his watch and chain and $235 in cash taken
+from his pocket while--"
+
+"That's another matter," said the New Yorker. "While you are in
+our city you should avail yourself of every opportunity to see its
+wonders. Our rapid transit system--"
+
+"If you was out in Topaz," broke in the man from there, "I could show
+you a whole cemetery full of people that got killed accidentally.
+Talking about mangling folks up! why, when Berry Rogers turned loose
+that old double-barrelled shot-gun of his loaded with slugs at
+anybody--"
+
+"Here, waiter!" called the New Yorker. "Two more of the same. It
+is acknowledged by every one that our city is the centre of art,
+and literature, and learning. Take, for instance, our after-dinner
+speakers. Where else in the country would you find such wit and
+eloquence as emanate from Depew and Ford, and--"
+
+"If you take the papers," interrupted the Westerner, "you must have
+read of Pete Webster's daughter. The Websters live two blocks north of
+the court-house in Topaz City. Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty
+days and nights without waking up. The doctors said that--"
+
+"Pass the matches, please," said the New Yorker. "Have you observed
+the expedition with which new buildings are being run up in New York?
+Improved inventions in steel framework and--"
+
+"I noticed," said the Nevadian, "that the statistics of Topaz City
+showed only one carpenter crushed by falling timbers last year and he
+was caught in a cyclone."
+
+"They abuse our sky line," continued the New Yorker, "and it is likely
+that we are not yet artistic in the construction of our buildings. But
+I can safely assert that we lead in pictorial and decorative art. In
+some of our houses can be found masterpieces in the way of paintings
+and sculpture. One who has the entree to our best galleries will
+find--"
+
+"Back up," exclaimed the man from Topaz City. "There was a game last
+month in our town in which $90,000 changed hands on a pair of--"
+
+"Ta-romt-tara!" went the orchestra. The stage curtain, blushing pink
+at the name "Asbestos" inscribed upon it, came down with a slow
+midsummer movement. The audience trickled leisurely down the elevator
+and stairs.
+
+On the sidewalk below, the New Yorker and the man from Topaz City
+shook hands with alcoholic gravity. The elevated crashed raucously,
+surface cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked,
+wheels clattered ear-piercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy
+thought, with which he aspired to clinch the pre-eminence of his city.
+
+"You must admit," said he, "that in the way of noise New York is far
+ahead of any other--"
+
+"Back to the everglades!" said the man from Topaz City. "In 1900, when
+Sousa's band and the repeating candidate were in our town you
+couldn't--"
+
+The rattle of an express wagon drowned the rest of the words.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+HOLDING UP A TRAIN
+
+
+   Note. The man who told me these things was for several years
+   an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he
+   so frankly describes. His description of the _modus operandi_
+   should prove interesting, his counsel of value to the
+   potential passenger in some future "hold-up," while his
+   estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce
+   any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in
+   almost exactly his own words.
+                                                         O. H.
+
+
+Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding
+up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have
+contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of
+express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was
+in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I
+got. The danger wasn't anything to speak of, and we didn't mind the
+trouble.
+
+One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have
+succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five
+is about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon
+several things.
+
+The first "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I
+got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business.
+Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone
+wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad
+man and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire
+fences and "nesters" made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth.
+
+Jim S---- and I were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters
+had the cowman on the go. They had taken up the land and elected
+officers who were hard to get along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta
+one day, going south from a round-up. We were having a little fun
+without malice toward anybody when a farmer administration cut in
+and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of
+corroborated his side of the argument. We skirmished up and down the
+main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time. After a while
+we leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso. We were
+riding a couple of horses that couldn't fly, but they could catch
+birds.
+
+A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the
+ranch and wanted us to go back with them. Naturally, we declined. We
+had the house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old
+'dobe was plumb full of lead. When dark came we fagged 'em a batch of
+bullets and shoved out the back door for the rocks. They sure smoked
+us as we went. We had to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in
+Oklahoma.
+
+Well, there wasn't anything we could get there, and, being mighty
+hard up, we decided to transact a little business with the railroads.
+Jim and I joined forces with Tom and Ike Moore--two brothers who had
+plenty of sand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call
+their names, for both of them are dead. Tom was shot while robbing a
+bank in Arkansas; Ike was killed during the more dangerous pastime of
+attending a dance in the Creek Nation.
+
+We selected a place on the Santa Fe where there was a bridge across a
+deep creek surrounded by heavy timber. All passenger trains took water
+at the tank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the
+nearest house being five miles away. The day before it happened, we
+rested our horses and "made medicine" as to how we should get about
+it. Our plans were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever
+engaged in a hold-up before.
+
+The Santa Fe flyer was due at the tank at 11.15 P. M. At eleven, Tom
+and I lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the
+other. As the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the
+track and the steam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over.
+I would have worked a whole year on the ranch for nothing to have
+been out of that affair right then. Some of the nerviest men in the
+business have told me that they felt the same way the first time.
+
+The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the running-board on
+one side, while Jim mounted the other. As soon as the engineer and
+fireman saw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and
+begged us not to shoot, saying they would do anything we wanted them
+to.
+
+"Hit the ground," I ordered, and they both jumped off. We drove them
+before us down the side of the train. While this was happening, Tom
+and Ike had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling
+like Apaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars. Some
+fellow stuck a little twenty-two calibre out one of the coach windows
+and fired it straight up in the air. I let drive and smashed the glass
+just over his head. That settled everything like resistance from that
+direction.
+
+By this time all my nervousness was gone. I felt a kind of pleasant
+excitement as if I were at a dance or a frolic of some sort. The
+lights were all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit
+firing and yelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard. I
+remember hearing a little bird chirping in a bush at the side of the
+track, as if it were complaining at being waked up.
+
+I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car
+and yelled to the messenger to open up or get perforated. He slid the
+door back and stood in it with his hands up. "Jump overboard, son," I
+said, and he hit the dirt like a lump of lead. There were two safes
+in the car--a big one and a little one. By the way, I first located
+the messenger's arsenal--a double-barrelled shot-gun with buckshot
+cartridges and a thirty-eight in a drawer. I drew the cartridges from
+the shot-gun, pocketed the pistol, and called the messenger inside. I
+shoved my gun against his nose and put him to work. He couldn't open
+the big safe, but he did the little one. There was only nine hundred
+dollars in it. That was mighty small winnings for our trouble, so we
+decided to go through the passengers. We took our prisoners to the
+smoking-car, and from there sent the engineer through the train to
+light up the coaches. Beginning with the first one, we placed a man at
+each door and ordered the passengers to stand between the seats with
+their hands up.
+
+If you want to find out what cowards the majority of men are, all you
+have to do is rob a passenger train. I don't mean because they don't
+resist--I'll tell you later on why they can't do that--but it makes
+a man feel sorry for them the way they lose their heads. Big, burly
+drummers and farmers and ex-soldiers and high-collared dudes and
+sports that, a few moments before, were filling the car with noise and
+bragging, get so scared that their ears flop.
+
+There were very few people in the day coaches at that time of night,
+so we made a slim haul until we got to the sleeper. The Pullman
+conductor met me at one door while Jim was going round to the other
+one. He very politely informed me that I could not go into that car,
+as it did not belong to the railroad company, and, besides, the
+passengers had already been greatly disturbed by the shouting and
+firing. Never in all my life have I met with a finer instance of
+official dignity and reliance upon the power of Mr. Pullman's great
+name. I jabbed my six-shooter so hard against Mr. Conductor's front
+that I afterward found one of his vest buttons so firmly wedged in the
+end of the barrel that I had to shoot it out. He just shut up like a
+weak-springed knife and rolled down the car steps.
+
+I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat
+old man came wabbling up to me, puffing and blowing. He had one
+coat-sleeve on and was trying to put his vest on over that. I don't
+know who he thought I was.
+
+"Young man, young man," says he, "you must keep cool and not get
+excited. Above everything, keep cool."
+
+"I can't," says I. "Excitement's just eating me up." And then I let
+out a yell and turned loose my forty-five through the skylight.
+
+That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screech
+came out of it and a bare foot that took him in the bread-basket and
+landed him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and I
+hollered for everybody to climb out and line up.
+
+They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-ringed
+circus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in
+a deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of
+clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the
+aisle, looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. He was
+trying, very solemn, to pull a lady's number two shoe on his number
+nine foot.
+
+The ladies didn't stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real,
+live train robber, bless 'em, that they just wrapped blankets and
+sheets around themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking.
+They always show more curiosity and sand than the men do.
+
+We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the
+bunch. I found very little on them--I mean in the way of valuables.
+One man in the line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown,
+solemn snoozers that sit on the platform at lectures and look wise.
+Before crawling out he had managed to put on his long, frock-tailed
+coat and his high silk hat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas
+and bunions. When I dug into that Prince Albert, I expected to drag
+out at least a block of gold mine stock or an armful of Government
+bonds, but all I found was a little boy's French harp about four
+inches long. What it was there for, I don't know. I felt a little mad
+because he had fooled me so. I stuck the harp up against his mouth.
+
+"If you can't pay--play," I says.
+
+"I can't play," says he.
+
+"Then learn right off quick," says I, letting him smell the end of my
+gun-barrel.
+
+He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to
+blow. He blew a dinky little tune I remembered hearing when I was a
+kid:
+
+
+   Prettiest little gal in the country--oh!
+   Mammy and Daddy told me so.
+
+
+I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now and
+then he'd get weak and off the key, and I'd turn my gun on him and
+ask what was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any
+intention of going back on her, which would make him start up again
+like sixty. I think that old boy standing there in his silk hat and
+bare feet, playing his little French harp, was the funniest sight I
+ever saw. One little red-headed woman in the line broke out laughing
+at him. You could have heard her in the next car.
+
+Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled
+around in those beds and filled a pillow-case with the strangest
+assortment of stuff you ever saw. Now and then I'd come across a
+little pop-gun pistol, just about right for plugging teeth with,
+which I'd throw out the window. When I finished with the collection,
+I dumped the pillow-case load in the middle of the aisle. There
+were a good many watches, bracelets, rings, and pocket-books, with
+a sprinkling of false teeth, whiskey flasks, face-powder boxes,
+chocolate caramels, and heads of hair of various colours and lengths.
+There were also about a dozen ladies' stockings into which jewellery,
+watches, and rolls of bills had been stuffed and then wadded up tight
+and stuck under the mattresses. I offered to return what I called the
+"scalps," saying that we were not Indians on the war-path, but none of
+the ladies seemed to know to whom the hair belonged.
+
+One of the women--and a good-looker she was--wrapped in a striped
+blanket, saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky
+and heavy about the toe, and she snapped out:
+
+"That's mine, sir. You're not in the business of robbing women, are
+you?"
+
+Now, as this was our first hold-up, we hadn't agreed upon any code
+of ethics, so I hardly knew what to answer. But, anyway, I replied:
+"Well, not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you
+can have it back."
+
+"It just does," she declared eagerly, and reached out her hand for it.
+
+"You'll excuse my taking a look at the contents," I said, holding the
+stocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big gent's gold watch, worth
+two hundred, a gent's leather pocket-book that we afterward found
+to contain six hundred dollars, a 32-calibre revolver; and the only
+thing of the lot that could have been a lady's personal property was
+a silver bracelet worth about fifty cents.
+
+I said: "Madame, here's your property," and handed her the bracelet.
+"Now," I went on, "how can you expect us to act square with you when
+you try to deceive us in this manner? I'm surprised at such conduct."
+
+The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing something
+dishonest. Some other woman down the line called out: "The mean
+thing!" I never knew whether she meant the other lady or me.
+
+When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told 'em
+good night very politely at the door, and left. We rode forty miles
+before daylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got
+$1,752.85 in money. We lumped the jewellery around. Then we scattered,
+each man for himself.
+
+That was my first train robbery, and it was about as easily done as
+any of the ones that followed. But that was the last and only time
+I ever went through the passengers. I don't like that part of the
+business. Afterward I stuck strictly to the express car. During the
+next eight years I handled a good deal of money.
+
+The best haul I made was just seven years after the first one. We
+found out about a train that was going to bring out a lot of money
+to pay off the soldiers at a Government post. We stuck that train up
+in broad daylight. Five of us lay in the sand hills near a little
+station. Ten soldiers were guarding the money on the train, but they
+might just as well have been at home on a furlough. We didn't even
+allow them to stick their heads out the windows to see the fun. We
+had no trouble at all in getting the money, which was all in gold. Of
+course, a big howl was raised at the time about the robbery. It was
+Government stuff, and the Government got sarcastic and wanted to know
+what the convoy of soldiers went along for. The only excuse given was
+that nobody was expecting an attack among those bare sand hills in
+daytime. I don't know what the Government thought about the excuse,
+but I know that it was a good one. The surprise--that is the keynote
+of the train-robbing business. The papers published all kinds of
+stories about the loss, finally agreeing that it was between nine
+thousand and ten thousand dollars. The Government sawed wood. Here are
+the correct figures, printed for the first time--forty-eight thousand
+dollars. If anybody will take the trouble to look over Uncle Sam's
+private accounts for that little debit to profit and loss, he will
+find that I am right to a cent.
+
+By that time we were expert enough to know what to do. We rode due
+west twenty miles, making a trail that a Broadway policeman could have
+followed, and then we doubled back, hiding our tracks. On the second
+night after the hold-up, while posses were scouring the country in
+every direction, Jim and I were eating supper in the second story of
+a friend's house in the town where the alarm started from. Our friend
+pointed out to us, in an office across the street, a printing press at
+work striking off handbills offering a reward for our capture.
+
+I have been asked what we do with the money we get. Well, I never
+could account for a tenth part of it after it was spent. It goes
+fast and freely. An outlaw has to have a good many friends. A highly
+respected citizen may, and often does, get along with very few, but a
+man on the dodge has got to have "sidekickers." With angry posses and
+reward-hungry officers cutting out a hot trail for him, he must have
+a few places scattered about the country where he can stop and feed
+himself and his horse and get a few hours' sleep without having to
+keep both eyes open. When he makes a haul he feels like dropping some
+of the coin with these friends, and he does it liberally. Sometimes I
+have, at the end of a hasty visit at one of these havens of refuge,
+flung a handful of gold and bills into the laps of the kids playing
+on the floor, without knowing whether my contribution was a hundred
+dollars or a thousand.
+
+When old-timers make a big haul they generally go far away to one of
+the big cities to spend their money. Green hands, however successful a
+hold-up they make, nearly always give themselves away by showing too
+much money near the place where they got it.
+
+I was in a job in '94 where we got twenty thousand dollars. We
+followed our favourite plan for a get-away--that is, doubled on our
+trail--and laid low for a time near the scene of the train's bad luck.
+One morning I picked up a newspaper and read an article with big
+headlines stating that the marshal, with eight deputies and a posse of
+thirty armed citizens, had the train robbers surrounded in a mesquite
+thicket on the Cimarron, and that it was a question of only a few
+hours when they would be dead men or prisoners. While I was reading
+that article I was sitting at breakfast in one of the most elegant
+private residences in Washington City, with a flunky in knee pants
+standing behind my chair. Jim was sitting across the table talking to
+his half-uncle, a retired naval officer, whose name you have often
+seen in the accounts of doings in the capital. We had gone there and
+bought rattling outfits of good clothes, and were resting from our
+labours among the nabobs. We must have been killed in that mesquite
+thicket, for I can make an affidavit that we didn't surrender.
+
+Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then,
+why no one should ever do it.
+
+In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That
+is, of course, supposing that they are old-timers with the necessary
+experience and courage. They have the outside and are protected by
+the darkness, while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small
+space, and exposed, the moment they show a head at a window or door,
+to the aim of a man who is a dead shot and who won't hesitate to
+shoot.
+
+But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy
+is the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the
+passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you
+will understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed.
+That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You
+can't coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks
+as big to him as the Mississippi River. That's just the way with the
+passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting
+outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a
+forty-five looks like the entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all
+right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of
+money in his shoe and forgetting to dig-up until you jostle his ribs
+some with the end of your six-shooter; but there's no harm in him.
+
+As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than
+if they had been so many sheep. I don't mean that they are cowards;
+I mean that they have got sense. They know they're not up against a
+bluff. It's the same way with the officers. I've seen secret service
+men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek
+as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun
+under his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll.
+He wasn't afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole
+outfit. Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel
+that they oughtn't to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for
+the man who holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day,
+and he generally does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a
+hold-up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an
+occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Another reason why
+officers are backward about mixing things with a train robber is a
+financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and somebody gets
+killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they
+swear out a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of
+miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives,
+and the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of
+mileage rather than courage.
+
+I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is
+the best card in playing for a hold-up.
+
+Along in '92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers
+down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got
+so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what
+job they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they
+were going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the
+station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.
+
+That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in
+Muscogee and put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed
+men hid in the depot at Pryor Creek.
+
+When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next station
+was Adair, six miles away. When the train reached there, and the
+deputies were having a good time explaining what they would have done
+to the Dalton gang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like
+an army firing outside. The conductor and brakeman came running into
+the car yelling, "Train robbers!"
+
+Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept
+on running. Some of them hid their Winchesters under the seats. Two of
+them made a fight and were both killed.
+
+It took the Daltons just ten minutes to capture the train and whip
+the escort. In twenty minutes more they robbed the express car of
+twenty-seven thousand dollars and made a clean get-away.
+
+My opinion is that those deputies would have put up a stiff fight at
+Pryor Creek, where they were expecting trouble, but they were taken by
+surprise and "locoed" at Adair, just as the Daltons, who knew their
+business, expected they would.
+
+I don't think I ought to close without giving some deductions from
+my experience of eight years "on the dodge." It doesn't pay to rob
+trains. Leaving out the question of right and morals, which I don't
+think I ought to tackle, there is very little to envy in the life of
+an outlaw. After a while money ceases to have any value in his eyes.
+He gets to looking upon the railroads and express companies as his
+bankers, and his six-shooter as a cheque book good for any amount. He
+throws away money right and left. Most of the time he is on the jump,
+riding day and night, and he lives so hard between times that he
+doesn't enjoy the taste of high life when he gets it. He knows that
+his time is bound to come to lose his life or liberty, and that the
+accuracy of his aim, the speed of his horse, and the fidelity of his
+"sider," are all that postpone the inevitable.
+
+It isn't that he loses any sleep over danger from the officers of the
+law. In all my experience I never knew officers to attack a band of
+outlaws unless they outnumbered them at least three to one.
+
+But the outlaw carries one thought constantly in his mind--and that is
+what makes him so sore against life, more than anything else--he knows
+where the marshals get their recruits of deputies. He knows that the
+majority of these upholders of the law were once lawbreakers, horse
+thieves, rustlers, highwaymen, and outlaws like himself, and that they
+gained their positions and immunity by turning state's evidence, by
+turning traitor and delivering up their comrades to imprisonment and
+death. He knows that some day--unless he is shot first--his Judas will
+set to work, the trap will be laid, and he will be the surprised
+instead of a surpriser at a stick-up.
+
+That is why the man who holds up trains picks his company with
+a thousand times the care with which a careful girl chooses a
+sweetheart. That is why he raises himself from his blanket of nights
+and listens to the tread of every horse's hoofs on the distant road.
+That is why he broods suspiciously for days upon a jesting remark or
+an unusual movement of a tried comrade, or the broken mutterings of
+his closest friend, sleeping by his side.
+
+And it is one of the reasons why the train-robbing profession is not
+so pleasant a one as either of its collateral branches--politics or
+cornering the market.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN
+
+
+Do you know the time of the dogmen?
+
+When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines
+of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the
+most melancholy sights of urban life.
+
+Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff
+dwellers of New York steals an army of beings that were once men. Even
+yet they go upright upon two limbs and retain human form and speech;
+but you will observe that they are behind animals in progress. Each of
+these beings follows a dog, to which he is fastened by an artificial
+ligament.
+
+These men are all victims to Circe. Not willingly do they become
+flunkeys to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers, and toddlers after
+Towzer. Modern Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly
+left the difference of a six-foot leash between them. Every one of
+those dogmen has been either cajoled, bribed, or commanded by his own
+particular Circe to take the dear household pet out for an airing.
+
+By their faces and manner you can tell that the dogmen are bound in a
+hopeless enchantment. Never will there come even a dog-catcher Ulysses
+to remove the spell.
+
+The faces of some are stonily set. They are past the commiseration,
+the curiosity, or the jeers of their fellow-beings. Years of
+matrimony, of continuous compulsory canine constitutionals, have
+made them callous. They unwind their beasts from lamp posts, or the
+ensnared legs of profane pedestrians, with the stolidity of mandarins
+manipulating the strings of their kites.
+
+Others, more recently reduced to the ranks of Rover's retinue, take
+their medicine sulkily and fiercely. They play the dog on the end of
+their line with the pleasure felt by the girl out fishing when she
+catches a sea-robin on her hook. They glare at you threateningly if
+you look at them, as if it would be their delight to let slip the dogs
+of war. These are half-mutinous dogmen, not quite Circe-ized, and you
+will do well not to kick their charges, should they sniff around your
+ankles.
+
+Others of the tribe do not seem to feel so keenly. They are mostly
+unfresh youths, with gold caps and drooping cigarettes, who do not
+harmonize with their dogs. The animals they attend wear satin bows in
+their collars; and the young men steer them so assiduously that you
+are tempted to the theory that some personal advantage, contingent
+upon satisfactory service, waits upon the execution of their duties.
+
+The dogs thus personally conducted are of many varieties; but they
+are one in fatness, in pampered, diseased vileness of temper, in
+insolent, snarling capriciousness of behaviour. They tug at the leash
+fractiously, they make leisurely nasal inventory of every door step,
+railing, and post. They sit down to rest when they choose; they wheeze
+like the winner of a Third Avenue beefsteak-eating contest; they
+blunder clumsily into open cellars and coal holes; they lead the
+dogmen a merry dance.
+
+These unfortunate dry nurses of dogdom, the cur cuddlers,
+mongrel managers, Spitz stalkers, poodle pullers, Skye scrapers,
+dachshund dandlers, terrier trailers and Pomeranian pushers of the
+cliff-dwelling Circes follow their charges meekly. The doggies neither
+fear nor respect them. Masters of the house these men whom they hold
+in leash may be, but they are not masters of them. From cosey corner
+to fire escape, from divan to dumbwaiter, doggy's snarl easily drives
+this two-legged being who is commissioned to walk at the other end of
+his string during his outing.
+
+One twilight the dogmen came forth as usual at their Circes' pleading,
+guerdon, or crack of the whip. One among them was a strong man,
+apparently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression
+was melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white
+dog, loathsomely fat, fiendishly ill-natured, gloatingly intractable
+toward his despised conductor.
+
+At a corner nearest to his apartment house the dogman turned down a
+side street, hoping for fewer witnesses to his ignominy. The surfeited
+beast waddled before him, panting with spleen and the labour of
+motion.
+
+Suddenly the dog stopped. A tall, brown, long-coated, wide-brimmed man
+stood like a Colossus blocking the sidewalk and declaring:
+
+"Well, I'm a son of a gun!"
+
+"Jim Berry!" breathed the dogman, with exclamation points in his
+voice.
+
+"Sam Telfair," cried Wide-Brim again, "you ding-basted old
+willy-walloo, give us your hoof!"
+
+Their hands clasped in the brief, tight greeting of the West that is
+death to the hand-shake microbe.
+
+"You old fat rascal!" continued Wide-Brim, with a wrinkled brown
+smile; "it's been five years since I seen you. I been in this town a
+week, but you can't find nobody in such a place. Well, you dinged old
+married man, how are they coming?"
+
+Something mushy and heavily soft like raised dough leaned against
+Jim's leg and chewed his trousers with a yeasty growl.
+
+"Get to work," said Jim, "and explain this yard-wide hydrophobia
+yearling you've throwed your lasso over. Are you the pound-master of
+this burg? Do you call that a dog or what?"
+
+"I need a drink," said the dogman, dejected at the reminder of his old
+dog of the sea. "Come on."
+
+Hard by was a cafe. 'Tis ever so in the big city.
+
+They sat at a table, and the bloated monster yelped and scrambled at
+the end of his leash to get at the cafe cat.
+
+"Whiskey," said Jim to the waiter.
+
+"Make it two," said the dogman.
+
+"You're fatter," said Jim, "and you look subjugated. I don't know
+about the East agreeing with you. All the boys asked me to hunt you up
+when I started. Sandy King, he went to the Klondike. Watson Burrel, he
+married the oldest Peters girl. I made some money buying beeves, and
+I bought a lot of wild land up on the Little Powder. Going to fence
+next fall. Bill Rawlins, he's gone to farming. You remember Bill, of
+course--he was courting Marcella--excuse me, Sam--I mean the lady you
+married, while she was teaching school at Prairie View. But you was
+the lucky man. How is Missis Telfair?"
+
+"S-h-h-h!" said the dogman, signalling the waiter; "give it a name."
+
+"Whiskey," said Jim.
+
+"Make it two," said the dogman.
+
+"She's well," he continued, after his chaser. "She refused to live
+anywhere but in New York, where she came from. We live in a flat.
+Every evening at six I take that dog out for a walk. It's Marcella's
+pet. There never were two animals on earth, Jim, that hated one
+another like me and that dog does. His name's Lovekins. Marcella
+dresses for dinner while we're out. We eat tabble dote. Ever try one
+of them, Jim?"
+
+"No, I never," said Jim. "I seen the signs, but I thought they said
+'table de hole.' I thought it was French for pool tables. How does it
+taste?"
+
+"If you're going to be in the city for awhile we will--"
+
+"No, sir-ee. I'm starting for home this evening on the 7.25. Like to
+stay longer, but I can't."
+
+"I'll walk down to the ferry with you," said the dogman.
+
+The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had
+sunk into a comatose slumber. Jim stumbled, and the leash was slightly
+wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.
+
+"If that's your dog," said Jim, when they were on the street again,
+"what's to hinder you from running that habeas corpus you've got
+around his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?"
+
+"I'd never dare to," said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition.
+"He sleeps in the bed, I sleep on a lounge. He runs howling to
+Marcella if I look at him. Some night, Jim, I'm going to get even with
+that dog. I've made up my mind to do it. I'm going to creep over with
+a knife and cut a hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in to him.
+See if I don't do it!"
+
+"You ain't yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain't what you was once. I don't
+know about these cities and flats over here. With my own eyes I seen
+you stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass
+faucet out of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the
+wildest steer on Little Powder in 39 1-2."
+
+"I did, didn't I?" said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye.
+"But that was before I was dogmatized."
+
+"Does Misses Telfair--" began Jim.
+
+"Hush!" said the dogman. "Here's another cafe."
+
+They lined up at the bar. The dog fell asleep at their feet.
+
+"Whiskey," said Jim.
+
+"Make it two," said the dogman.
+
+"I thought about you," said Jim, "when I bought that wild land. I
+wished you was out there to help me with the stock."
+
+"Last Tuesday," said the dogman, "he bit me on the ankle because I
+asked for cream in my coffee. He always gets the cream."
+
+"You'd like Prairie View now," said Jim. "The boys from the round-ups
+for fifty miles around ride in there. One corner of my pasture is in
+sixteen miles of the town. There's a straight forty miles of wire on
+one side of it."
+
+"You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom," said the dogman,
+"and you pass through the parlour to get to the bath room, and you
+back out through the dining-room to get into the bedroom so you can
+turn around and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his
+sleep, and I have to smoke in the park on account of his asthma."
+
+"Don't Missis Telfair--" began Jim.
+
+"Oh, shut up!" said the dogman. "What is it this time?"
+
+"Whiskey," said Jim.
+
+"Make it two," said the dogman.
+
+"Well, I'll be racking along down toward the ferry," said the other.
+
+"Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-legged
+ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!" shouted the dogman, with a new note in
+his voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after them,
+with an angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.
+
+At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through
+swinging doors.
+
+"Last chance," said he. "Speak up."
+
+"Whiskey," said Jim.
+
+"Make it two," said the dogman.
+
+"I don't know," said the ranchman, "where I'll find the man I want
+to take charge of the Little Powder outfit. I want somebody I know
+something about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever
+squinted your eye over, Sam. Now if you was--"
+
+"Speaking of hydrophobia," said the dogman, "the other night he chewed
+a piece out of my leg because I knocked a fly off of Marcella's arm.
+'It ought to be cauterized,' says Marcella, and I was thinking so
+myself. I telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says
+to me: 'Help me hold the poor dear while the doctor fixes his mouth.
+Oh, I hope he got no virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.' Now
+what do you think of that?"
+
+"Does Missis Telfair--" began Jim.
+
+"Oh, drop it," said the dogman. "Come again!"
+
+"Whiskey," said Jim.
+
+"Make it two," said the dogman.
+
+They walked on to the ferry. The ranchman stepped to the ticket
+window.
+
+Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard,
+the air was rent by piercing canine shrieks, and a pained, outraged,
+lubberly, bow-legged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street
+alone.
+
+"Ticket to Denver," said Jim.
+
+"Make it two," shouted the ex-dogman, reaching for his inside pocket.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER
+
+
+If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New
+Yorker he probably wouldn't know whether you were referring to a new
+political dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from "Parsifal." But out
+in the Kiowa Reservation advices have been received concerning the
+existence of New York.
+
+A party of us were on a hunting trip in the Reservation. Bud
+Kingsbury, our guide, philosopher, and friend, was broiling antelope
+steaks in camp one night. One of the party, a pinkish-haired young man
+in a correct hunting costume, sauntered over to the fire to light a
+cigarette, and remarked carelessly to Bud:
+
+"Nice night!"
+
+"Why, yes," said Bud, "as nice as any night could be that ain't
+received the Broadway stamp of approval."
+
+Now, the young man was from New York, but the rest of us wondered how
+Bud guessed it. So, when the steaks were done, we besought him to
+lay bare his system of ratiocination. And as Bud was something of a
+Territorial talking machine he made oration as follows:
+
+"How did I know he was from New York? Well, I figured it out as soon
+as he sprung them two words on me. I was in New York myself a couple
+of years ago, and I noticed some of the earmarks and hoof tracks of
+the Rancho Manhattan."
+
+"Found New York rather different from the Panhandle, didn't you, Bud?"
+asked one of the hunters.
+
+"Can't say that I did," answered Bud; "anyways, not more than some.
+The main trail in that town which they call Broadway is plenty
+travelled, but they're about the same brand of bipeds that tramp
+around in Cheyenne and Amarillo, At first I was sort of rattled by the
+crowds, but I soon says to myself, 'Here, now, Bud; they're just plain
+folks like you and Geronimo and Grover Cleveland and the Watson boys,
+so don't get all flustered up with consternation under your saddle
+blanket,' and then I feels calm and peaceful, like I was back in the
+Nation again at a ghost dance or a green corn pow-wow.
+
+"I'd been saving up for a year to give this New York a whirl. I knew
+a man named Summers that lived there, but I couldn't find him; so
+I played a lone hand at enjoying the intoxicating pleasures of the
+corn-fed metropolis.
+
+"For a while I was so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights
+and the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads
+that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural
+requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of
+sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out in the
+Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine
+minutes I know his income, religion, size of collar, and his wife's
+temper, and how much he pays for clothes, alimony, and chewing
+tobacco. It's a gift with me not to be penurious with my conversation.
+
+"But this here New York was inaugurated on the idea of abstemiousness
+in regard to the parts of speech. At the end of three weeks nobody in
+the city had fired even a blank syllable in my direction except the
+waiter in the grub emporium where I fed. And as his outpourings of
+syntax wasn't nothing but plagiarisms from the bill of fare, he never
+satisfied my yearnings, which was to have somebody hit. If I stood
+next to a man at a bar he'd edge off and give a Baldwin-Ziegler look
+as if he suspected me of having the North Pole concealed on my person.
+I began to wish that I'd gone to Abilene or Waco for my _paseado_; for
+the mayor of them places will drink with you, and the first citizen
+you meet will tell you his middle name and ask you to take a chance
+in a raffle for a music box.
+
+"Well, one day when I was particular hankering for to be gregarious
+with something more loquacious than a lamp post, a fellow in a caffy
+says to me, says he:
+
+"'Nice day!'
+
+"He was a kind of a manager of the place, and I reckon he'd seen me
+in there a good many times. He had a face like a fish and an eye like
+Judas, but I got up and put one arm around his neck.
+
+"'Pardner,' I says, 'sure it's a nice day. You're the first gentleman
+in all New York to observe that the intricacies of human speech might
+not be altogether wasted on William Kingsbury. But don't you think,'
+says I, 'that 'twas a little cool early in the morning; and ain't
+there a feeling of rain in the air to-night? But along about noon it
+sure was gallupsious weather. How's all up to the house? You doing
+right well with the caffy, now?'
+
+"Well, sir, that galoot just turns his back and walks off stiff,
+without a word, after all my trying to be agreeable! I didn't know
+what to make of it. That night I finds a note from Summers, who'd
+been away from town, giving the address of his camp. I goes up to
+his house and has a good, old-time talk with his folks. And I tells
+Summers about the actions of this coyote in the caffy, and desires
+interpretation.
+
+"'Oh,' says Summers, 'he wasn't intending to strike up a conversation
+with you. That's just the New York style. He'd seen you was a regular
+customer and he spoke a word or two just to show you he appreciated
+your custom. You oughtn't to have followed it up. That's about as far
+as we care to go with a stranger. A word or so about the weather may
+be ventured, but we don't generally make it the basis of an
+acquaintance.'
+
+"'Billy,' says I, 'the weather and its ramifications is a solemn
+subject with me. Meteorology is one of my sore points. No man can
+open up the question of temperature or humidity or the glad sunshine
+with me, and then turn tail on it without its leading to a falling
+barometer. I'm going down to see that man again and give him a lesson
+in the art of continuous conversation. You say New York etiquette
+allows him two words and no answer. Well, he's going to turn himself
+into a weather bureau and finish what he begun with me, besides
+indulging in neighbourly remarks on other subjects.'
+
+"Summers talked agin it, but I was irritated some and I went on the
+street car back to that caffy.
+
+"The same fellow was there yet, walking round in a sort of back corral
+where there was tables and chairs. A few people was sitting around
+having drinks and sneering at one another.
+
+"I called that man to one side and herded him into a corner. I
+unbuttoned enough to show him a thirty-eight I carried stuck under my
+vest.
+
+"'Pardner,' I says, 'a brief space ago I was in here and you seized
+the opportunity to say it was a nice day. When I attempted to
+corroborate your weather signal, you turned your back and walked off.
+Now,' says I, 'you frog-hearted, language-shy, stiff-necked cross
+between a Spitzbergen sea cook and a muzzled oyster, you resume where
+you left off in your discourse on the weather.'
+
+"The fellow looks at me and tries to grin, but he sees I don't and he
+comes around serious.
+
+"'Well,' says he, eyeing the handle of my gun, 'it was rather a nice
+day; some warmish, though.'
+
+"'Particulars, you mealy-mouthed snoozer,' I says--'let's have the
+specifications--expatiate--fill in the outlines. When you start
+anything with me in short-hand it's bound to turn out a storm signal.'
+
+"'Looked like rain yesterday,' says the man, 'but it cleared off fine
+in the forenoon. I hear the farmers are needing rain right badly
+up-State.'
+
+"'That's the kind of a canter,' says I. 'Shake the New York dust off
+your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur. You broke the
+ice, you know, and we're getting better acquainted every minute. Seems
+to me I asked you about your family?'
+
+"'They're all well, thanks,' says he. 'We--we have a new piano.'
+
+"'Now you're coming it,' I says. 'This cold reserve is breaking up
+at last. That little touch about the piano almost makes us brothers.
+What's the youngest kid's name?' I asks him.
+
+"'Thomas,' says he. 'He's just getting well from the measles.'
+
+"'I feel like I'd known you always,' says I. 'Now there was just one
+more--are you doing right well with the caffy, now?'
+
+"'Pretty well,' he says. 'I'm putting away a little money.'
+
+"'Glad to hear it,' says I. 'Now go back to your work and get
+civilized. Keep your hands off the weather unless you're ready to
+follow it up in a personal manner, It's a subject that naturally
+belongs to sociability and the forming of new ties, and I hate to see
+it handed out in small change in a town like this.'
+
+"So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from
+New York City."
+
+For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire,
+and then all hands began to disperse for bed.
+
+As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkish-haired young man
+saying to Bud, with something like anxiety in his voice:
+
+"As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about
+this night. The delightful breeze and the bright stars and the clear
+air unite in making it wonderfully attractive."
+
+"Yes," said Bud, "it's a nice night."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
+
+
+The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his
+time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before
+taking anything else.
+
+The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and
+untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was
+sitting on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a
+yachting cap that no one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely
+heart. He knew by the light in the third-story front windows, and by
+the lateness of the season, that the master of the house had come
+home, and would soon extinguish his light and retire. For it was
+September of the year and of the soul, in which season the house's
+good man comes to consider roof gardens and stenographers as vanities,
+and to desire the return of his mate and the more durable blessings of
+decorum and the moral excellencies.
+
+The burglar lighted a cigarette. The guarded glow of the match
+illuminated his salient points for a moment. He belonged to the third
+type of burglars.
+
+This third type has not yet been recognized and accepted. The police
+have made us familiar with the first and second. Their classification
+is simple. The collar is the distinguishing mark.
+
+When a burglar is caught who does not wear a collar he is described as
+a degenerate of the lowest type, singularly vicious and depraved, and
+is suspected of being the desperate criminal who stole the handcuffs
+out of Patrolman Hennessy's pocket in 1878 and walked away to escape
+arrest.
+
+The other well-known type is the burglar who wears a collar. He is
+always referred to as a Raffles in real life. He is invariably a
+gentleman by daylight, breakfasting in a dress suit, and posing as a
+paperhanger, while after dark he plies his nefarious occupation of
+burglary. His mother is an extremely wealthy and respected resident
+of Ocean Grove, and when he is conducted to his cell he asks at once
+for a nail file and the _Police Gazette_. He always has a wife in
+every State in the Union and fiancees in all the Territories, and the
+newspapers print his matrimonial gallery out of their stock of cuts of
+the ladies who were cured by only one bottle after having been given
+up by five doctors, experiencing great relief after the first dose.
+
+The burglar wore a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of
+the chefs from Hell's Kitchen. The police would have been baffled
+had they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the
+respectable, unassuming burglar who is neither above nor below his
+station.
+
+This burglar of the third class began to prowl. He wore no masks,
+dark lanterns, or gum shoes. He carried a 38-calibre revolver in his
+pocket, and he chewed peppermint gum thoughtfully.
+
+The furniture of the house was swathed in its summer dust protectors.
+The silver was far away in safe-deposit vaults. The burglar expected
+no remarkable "haul." His objective point was that dimly lighted
+room where the master of the house should be sleeping heavily
+after whatever solace he had sought to lighten the burden of
+his loneliness. A "touch" might be made there to the extent of
+legitimate, fair professional profits--loose money, a watch, a
+jewelled stick-pin--nothing exorbitant or beyond reason. He had seen
+the window left open and had taken the chance.
+
+The burglar softly opened the door of the lighted room. The gas was
+turned low. A man lay in the bed asleep. On the dresser lay many
+things in confusion--a crumpled roll of bills, a watch, keys, three
+poker chips, crushed cigars, a pink silk hair bow, and an unopened
+bottle of bromo-seltzer for a bulwark in the morning.
+
+The burglar took three steps toward the dresser. The man in the bed
+suddenly uttered a squeaky groan and opened his eyes. His right hand
+slid under his pillow, but remained there.
+
+"Lay still," said the burglar in conversational tone. Burglars of the
+third type do not hiss. The citizen in the bed looked at the round end
+of the burglar's pistol and lay still.
+
+"Now hold up both your hands," commanded the burglar.
+
+The citizen had a little, pointed, brown-and-gray beard, like that
+of a painless dentist. He looked solid, esteemed, irritable, and
+disgusted. He sat up in bed and raised his right hand above his head.
+
+"Up with the other one," ordered the burglar. "You might be amphibious
+and shoot with your left. You can count two, can't you? Hurry up,
+now."
+
+"Can't raise the other one," said the citizen, with a contortion of
+his lineaments.
+
+"What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Rheumatism in the shoulder."
+
+"Inflammatory?"
+
+"Was. The inflammation has gone down." The burglar stood for a moment
+or two, holding his gun on the afflicted one. He glanced at the
+plunder on the dresser and then, with a half-embarrassed air, back at
+the man in the bed. Then he, too, made a sudden grimace.
+
+"Don't stand there making faces," snapped the citizen, bad-humouredly.
+"If you've come to burgle why don't you do it? There's some stuff
+lying around."
+
+"'Scuse me," said the burglar, with a grin; "but it just socked me
+one, too. It's good for you that rheumatism and me happens to be old
+pals. I got it in my left arm, too. Most anybody but me would have
+popped you when you wouldn't hoist that left claw of yours."
+
+"How long have you had it?" inquired the citizen.
+
+"Four years. I guess that ain't all. Once you've got it, it's you for
+a rheumatic life--that's my judgment."
+
+"Ever try rattlesnake oil?" asked the citizen, interestedly.
+
+"Gallons," said the burglar. "If all the snakes I've used the oil of
+was strung out in a row they'd reach eight times as far as Saturn, and
+the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back."
+
+"Some use Chiselum's Pills," remarked the citizen.
+
+"Fudge!" said the burglar. "Took 'em five months. No good. I had some
+relief the year I tried Finkelham's Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices
+and Potts's Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried
+in my pocket what done the trick."
+
+"Is yours worse in the morning or at night?" asked the citizen.
+
+"Night," said the burglar; "just when I'm busiest. Say, take down that
+arm of yours--I guess you won't--Say! did you ever try Blickerstaff's
+Blood Builder?"
+
+"I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?"
+
+The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his
+crossed knee.
+
+"It jumps," said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it. I had
+to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way
+up. Tell you what--I don't believe the bloomin' doctors know what is
+good for it."
+
+"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief.
+Yours swell any?"
+
+"Of mornings. And when it's goin' to rain--great Christopher!"
+
+"Me, too," said the citizen. "I can tell when a streak of humidity the
+size of a table-cloth starts from Florida on its way to New York. And
+if I pass a theatre where there's an 'East Lynne' matinee going on,
+the moisture starts my left arm jumping like a toothache."
+
+"It's undiluted--hades!" said the burglar.
+
+"You're dead right," said the citizen.
+
+The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket
+with an awkward attempt at ease.
+
+"Say, old man," he said, constrainedly, "ever try opodeldoc?"
+
+"Slop!" said the citizen angrily. "Might as well rub on restaurant
+butter."
+
+"Sure," concurred the burglar. "It's a salve suitable for little
+Minnie when the kitty scratches her finger. I'll tell you what! We're
+up against it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little
+old sanitary, ameliorating, lest-we-forget Booze. Say--this job's
+off--'scuse me--get on your clothes and let's go out and have some.
+'Scuse the liberty, but--ouch! There she goes again!"
+
+"For a week," said the citizen. "I haven't been able to dress myself
+without help. I'm afraid Thomas is in bed, and--"
+
+"Climb out," said the burglar, "I'll help you get into your duds."
+
+The conventional returned as a tidal wave and flooded the citizen. He
+stroked his brown-and-gray beard.
+
+"It's very unusual--" he began.
+
+"Here's your shirt," said the burglar, "fall out. I knew a man who
+said Omberry's Ointment fixed him in two weeks so he could use both
+hands in tying his four-in-hand."
+
+As they were going out the door the citizen turned and started back.
+
+"'Liked to forgot my money," he explained; "laid it on the dresser
+last night."
+
+The burglar caught him by the right sleeve.
+
+"Come on," he said bluffly. "I ask you. Leave it alone. I've got the
+price. Ever try witch hazel and oil of wintergreen?"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS
+
+
+I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that
+blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical
+college--before he inherited his aunt's fortune--and had been
+considered strong in therapeutics.
+
+We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom
+ran up to my rooms for a pipe and a chat before going on to his own
+luxurious apartments. I had stepped into the other room for a moment
+when I heard Tom sing out:
+
+"Oh, Billy, I'm going to take about four grains of quinine, if you
+don't mind-- I'm feeling all blue and shivery. Guess I'm taking cold."
+
+"All right," I called back. "The bottle is on the second shelf. Take
+it in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus. It knocks the bitter
+out."
+
+After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In
+about eight minutes Tom sank back into a gentle collapse.
+
+I went straight to the medicine cabinet and looked.
+
+"You unmitigated hayseed!" I growled. "See what money will do for a
+man's brains!"
+
+There stood the morphine bottle with the stopple out, just as Tom had
+left it.
+
+I routed out another young M.D. who roomed on the floor above, and
+sent him for old Doctor Gales, two squares away. Tom Hopkins has too
+much money to be attended by rising young practitioners alone.
+
+When Gales came we put Tom through as expensive a course of treatment
+as the resources of the profession permit. After the more drastic
+remedies we gave him citrate of caffeine in frequent doses and strong
+coffee, and walked him up and down the floor between two of us. Old
+Gales pinched him and slapped his face and worked hard for the big
+check he could see in the distance. The young M.D. from the next floor
+gave Tom a most hearty, rousing kick, and then apologized to me.
+
+"Couldn't help it," he said. "I never kicked a millionaire before in
+my life. I may never have another opportunity."
+
+"Now," said Doctor Gales, after a couple of hours, "he'll do. But keep
+him awake for another hour. You can do that by talking to him and
+shaking him up occasionally. When his pulse and respiration are normal
+then let him sleep. I'll leave him with you now."
+
+I was left alone with Tom, whom we had laid on a couch. He lay very
+still, and his eyes were half closed. I began my work of keeping him
+awake.
+
+"Well, old man," I said, "you've had a narrow squeak, but we've pulled
+you through. When you were attending lectures, Tom, didn't any of
+the professors ever casually remark that m-o-r-p-h-i-a never spells
+'quinia,' especially in four-grain doses? But I won't pile it up on
+you until you get on your feet. But you ought to have been a druggist,
+Tom; you're splendidly qualified to fill prescriptions."
+
+Tom looked at me with a faint and foolish smile.
+
+"B'ly," he murmured, "I feel jus' like a hum'n bird flyin' around a
+jolly lot of most 'shpensive roses. Don' bozzer me. Goin' sleep now."
+
+And he went to sleep in two seconds. I shook him by the shoulder.
+
+"Now, Tom," I said, severely, "this won't do. The big doctor said you
+must stay awake for at least an hour. Open your eyes. You're not
+entirely safe yet, you know. Wake up."
+
+Tom Hopkins weighs one hundred and ninety-eight. He gave me another
+somnolent grin, and fell into deeper slumber. I would have made him
+move about, but I might as well have tried to make Cleopatra's needle
+waltz around the room with me. Tom's breathing became stertorous, and
+that, in connection with morphia poisoning, means danger.
+
+Then I began to think. I could not rouse his body; I must strive to
+excite his mind. "Make him angry," was an idea that suggested itself.
+"Good!" I thought; but how? There was not a joint in Tom's armour.
+Dear old fellow! He was good nature itself, and a gallant gentleman,
+fine and true and clean as sunlight. He came from somewhere down
+South, where they still have ideals and a code. New York had charmed,
+but had not spoiled, him. He had that old-fashioned chivalrous
+reverence for women, that--Eureka!--there was my idea! I worked the
+thing up for a minute or two in my imagination. I chuckled to myself
+at the thought of springing a thing like that on old Tom Hopkins. Then
+I took him by the shoulder and shook him till his ears flopped. He
+opened his eyes lazily. I assumed an expression of scorn and contempt,
+and pointed my finger within two inches of his nose.
+
+"Listen to me, Hopkins," I said, in cutting and distinct tones, "you
+and I have been good friends, but I want you to understand that in the
+future my doors are closed against any man who acts as much like a
+scoundrel as you have."
+
+Tom looked the least bit interested.
+
+"What's the matter, Billy?" he muttered, composedly. "Don't your
+clothes fit you?"
+
+"If I were in your place," I went on, "which, thank God, I am not, I
+think I would be afraid to close my eyes. How about that girl you left
+waiting for you down among those lonesome Southern pines--the girl
+that you've forgotten since you came into your confounded money? Oh,
+I know what I'm talking about. While you were a poor medical student
+she was good enough for you. But now, since you are a millionaire,
+it's different. I wonder what she thinks of the performances of that
+peculiar class of people which she has been taught to worship--the
+Southern gentlemen? I'm sorry, Hopkins, that I was forced to speak
+about these matters, but you've covered it up so well and played your
+part so nicely that I would have sworn you were above such unmanly
+tricks."
+
+Poor Tom. I could scarcely keep from laughing outright to see him
+struggling against the effects of the opiate. He was distinctly angry,
+and I didn't blame him. Tom had a Southern temper. His eyes were
+open now, and they showed a gleam or two of fire. But the drug still
+clouded his mind and bound his tongue.
+
+"C-c-confound you," he stammered, "I'll s-smash you."
+
+He tried to rise from the couch. With all his size he was very weak
+now. I thrust him back with one arm. He lay there glaring like a lion
+in a trap.
+
+"That will hold you for a while, you old <DW38>," I said to myself. I
+got up and lit my pipe, for I was needing a smoke. I walked around a
+bit, congratulating myself on my brilliant idea.
+
+I heard a snore. I looked around. Tom was asleep again. I walked over
+and punched him on the jaw. He looked at me as pleasant and ungrudging
+as an idiot. I chewed my pipe and gave it to him hard.
+
+"I want you to recover yourself and get out of my rooms as soon as
+you can," I said, insultingly. "I've told you what I think of you. If
+you have any honour or honesty left you will think twice before you
+attempt again to associate with gentlemen. She's a poor girl, isn't
+she?" I sneered. "Somewhat too plain and unfashionable for us since we
+got our money. Be ashamed to walk on Fifth Avenue with her, wouldn't
+you? Hopkins, you're forty-seven times worse than a cad. Who cares
+for your money? I don't. I'll bet that girl don't. Perhaps if you
+didn't have it you'd be more of a man. As it is you've made a cur
+of yourself, and"--I thought that quite dramatic--"perhaps broken a
+faithful heart." (Old Tom Hopkins breaking a faithful heart!) "Let me
+be rid of you as soon as possible."
+
+I turned my back on Tom, and winked at myself in a mirror. I heard
+him moving, and I turned again quickly. I didn't want a hundred and
+ninety-eight pounds falling on me from the rear. But Tom had only
+turned partly over, and laid one arm across his face. He spoke a few
+words rather more distinctly than before.
+
+"I couldn't have--talked this way--to you, Billy, even if I'd heard
+people--lyin' 'bout you. But jus' soon's I can s-stand up--I'll break
+your neck--don' f'get it."
+
+I did feel a little ashamed then. But it was to save Tom. In the
+morning, when I explained it, we would have a good laugh over it
+together.
+
+In about twenty minutes Tom dropped into a sound, easy slumber. I felt
+his pulse, listened to his respiration, and let him sleep. Everything
+was normal, and Tom was safe. I went into the other room and tumbled
+into bed.
+
+I found Tom up and dressed when I awoke the next morning. He was
+entirely himself again with the exception of shaky nerves and a tongue
+like a white-oak chip.
+
+"What an idiot I was," he said, thoughtfully. "I remember thinking
+that quinine bottle looked queer while I was taking the dose. Have
+much trouble in bringing me 'round?"
+
+I told him no. His memory seemed bad about the entire affair. I
+concluded that he had no recollection of my efforts to keep him awake,
+and decided not to enlighten him. Some other time, I thought, when he
+was feeling better, we would have some fun over it.
+
+When Tom was ready to go he stopped, with the door open, and shook my
+hand.
+
+"Much obliged, old fellow," he said, quietly, "for taking so much
+trouble with me--and for what you said. I'm going down now to
+telegraph to the little girl."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A GHOST OF A CHANCE
+
+
+"Actually, a _hod_!" repeated Mrs. Kinsolving, pathetically.
+
+Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she expressed
+condolence and a generous amount of apparent surprise.
+
+"Fancy her telling everywhere," recapitulated Mrs. Kinsolving, "that
+she saw a ghost in the apartment she occupied here--our choicest
+guest-room--a ghost, carrying a hod on its shoulder--the ghost of
+an old man in overalls, smoking a pipe and carrying a hod! The very
+absurdity of the thing shows her malicious intent. There never was a
+Kinsolving that carried a hod. Every one knows that Mr. Kinsolving's
+father accumulated his money by large building contracts, but he never
+worked a day with his own hands. He had this house built from his own
+plans; but--oh, a hod! Why need she have been so cruel and malicious?"
+
+"It is really too bad," murmured Mrs. Bellmore, with an approving
+glance of her fine eyes about the vast chamber done in lilac and old
+gold. "And it was in this room she saw it! Oh, no, I'm not afraid of
+ghosts. Don't have the least fear on my account. I'm glad you put me
+in here. I think family ghosts so interesting! But, really, the story
+does sound a little inconsistent. I should have expected something
+better from Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins. Don't they carry bricks in hods?
+Why should a ghost bring bricks into a villa built of marble and
+stone? I'm so sorry, but it makes me think that age is beginning to
+tell upon Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins."
+
+"This house," continued Mrs. Kinsolving, "was built upon the site of
+an old one used by the family during the Revolution. There wouldn't
+be anything strange in its having a ghost. And there was a Captain
+Kinsolving who fought in General Greene's army, though we've never
+been able to secure any papers to vouch for it. If there is to be a
+family ghost, why couldn't it have been his, instead of a
+bricklayer's?"
+
+"The ghost of a Revolutionary ancestor wouldn't be a bad idea," agreed
+Mrs. Bellmore; "but you know how arbitrary and inconsiderate ghosts
+can be. Maybe, like love, they are 'engendered in the eye.' One
+advantage of those who see ghosts is that their stories can't be
+disproved. By a spiteful eye, a Revolutionary knapsack might easily be
+construed to be a hod. Dear Mrs. Kinsolving, think no more of it. I am
+sure it was a knapsack."
+
+"But she told everybody!" mourned Mrs. Kinsolving, inconsolable. "She
+insisted upon the details. There is the pipe. And how are you going to
+get out of the overalls?"
+
+"Shan't get into them," said Mrs. Bellmore, with a prettily suppressed
+yawn; "too stiff and wrinkly. Is that you, Felice? Prepare my bath,
+please. Do you dine at seven at Clifftop, Mrs. Kinsolving? So kind of
+you to run in for a chat before dinner! I love those little touches of
+informality with a guest. They give such a home flavour to a visit. So
+sorry; I must be dressing. I am so indolent I always postpone it until
+the last moment."
+
+Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins had been the first large plum that the
+Kinsolvings had drawn from the social pie. For a long time, the
+pie itself had been out of reach on a top shelf. But the purse and
+the pursuit had at last lowered it. Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins was the
+heliograph of the smart society parading corps. The glitter of her wit
+and actions passed along the line, transmitting whatever was latest
+and most daring in the game of peep-show. Formerly, her fame and
+leadership had been secure enough not to need the support of such
+artifices as handing around live frogs for favours at a cotillon. But,
+now, these things were necessary to the holding of her throne. Beside,
+middle age had come to preside, incongruous, at her capers. The
+sensational papers had cut her space from a page to two columns.
+Her wit developed a sting; her manners became more rough and
+inconsiderate, as if she felt the royal necessity of establishing
+her autocracy by scorning the conventionalities that bound lesser
+potentates.
+
+To some pressure at the command of the Kinsolvings, she had yielded
+so far as to honour their house by her presence, for an evening and
+night. She had her revenge upon her hostess by relating, with grim
+enjoyment and sarcastic humour, her story of the vision carrying
+the hod. To that lady, in raptures at having penetrated thus far
+toward the coveted inner circle, the result came as a crushing
+disappointment. Everybody either sympathized or laughed, and there
+was little to choose between the two modes of expression.
+
+But, later on, Mrs. Kinsolving's hopes and spirits were revived by the
+capture of a second and greater prize.
+
+Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore had accepted an invitation to visit at Clifftop,
+and would remain for three days. Mrs. Bellmore was one of the younger
+matrons, whose beauty, descent, and wealth gave her a reserved seat
+in the holy of holies that required no strenuous bolstering. She was
+generous enough thus to give Mrs. Kinsolving the accolade that was so
+poignantly desired; and, at the same time, she thought how much it
+would please Terence. Perhaps it would end by solving him.
+
+Terence was Mrs. Kinsolving's son, aged twenty-nine, quite
+good-looking enough, and with two or three attractive and mysterious
+traits. For one, he was very devoted to his mother, and that was
+sufficiently odd to deserve notice. For others, he talked so little
+that it was irritating, and he seemed either very shy or very deep.
+Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore, because she was not sure which it
+was. She intended to study him a little longer, unless she forgot
+the matter. If he was only shy, she would abandon him, for shyness
+is a bore. If he was deep, she would also abandon him, for depth is
+precarious.
+
+On the afternoon of the third day of her visit, Terence hunted up Mrs.
+Bellmore, and found her in a nook actually looking at an album.
+
+"It's so good of you," said he, "to come down here and retrieve the
+day for us. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins
+scuttled the ship before she left. She knocked a whole plank out of
+the bottom with a hod. My mother is grieving herself ill about it.
+Can't you manage to see a ghost for us while you are here, Mrs.
+Bellmore--a bang-up, swell ghost, with a coronet on his head and a
+cheque book under his arm?"
+
+"That was a naughty old lady, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, "to tell
+such stories. Perhaps you gave her too much supper. Your mother
+doesn't really take it seriously, does she?"
+
+"I think she does," answered Terence. "One would think every brick
+in the hod had dropped on her. It's a good mammy, and I don't like
+to see her worried. It's to be hoped that the ghost belongs to the
+hod-carriers' union, and will go out on a strike. If he doesn't, there
+will be no peace in this family."
+
+"I'm sleeping in the ghost-chamber," said Mrs. Bellmore, pensively.
+"But it's so nice I wouldn't change it, even if I were afraid,
+which I'm not. It wouldn't do for me to submit a counter story of a
+desirable, aristocratic shade, would it? I would do so, with pleasure,
+but it seems to me it would be too obviously an antidote for the other
+narrative to be effective."
+
+"True," said Terence, running two fingers thoughtfully into his crisp,
+brown hair; "that would never do. How would it work to see the same
+ghost again, minus the overalls, and have gold bricks in the hod? That
+would elevate the spectre from degrading toil to a financial plane.
+Don't you think that would be respectable enough?"
+
+"There was an ancestor who fought against the Britishers, wasn't
+there? Your mother said something to that effect."
+
+"I believe so; one of those old chaps in raglan vests and golf
+trousers. I don't care a continental for a Continental, myself. But
+the mother has set her heart on pomp and heraldry and pyrotechnics,
+and I want her to be happy."
+
+"You are a good boy, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, sweeping her silks
+close to one side of her, "not to beat your mother. Sit here by me,
+and let's look at the album, just as people used to do twenty years
+ago. Now, tell me about every one of them. Who is this tall, dignified
+gentleman leaning against the horizon, with one arm on the Corinthian
+column?"
+
+"That old chap with the big feet?" inquired Terence, craning his neck.
+"That's great-uncle O'Brannigan. He used to keep a rathskeller on the
+Bowery."
+
+"I asked you to sit down, Terence. If you are not going to amuse, or
+obey, me, I shall report in the morning that I saw a ghost wearing an
+apron and carrying schooners of beer. Now, that is better. To be shy,
+at your age, Terence, is a thing that you should blush to
+acknowledge."
+
+
+
+At breakfast on the last morning of her visit, Mrs. Bellmore startled
+and entranced every one present by announcing positively that she had
+seen the ghost.
+
+"Did it have a--a--a--?" Mrs. Kinsolving, in her suspense and
+agitation, could not bring out the word.
+
+"No, indeed--far from it."
+
+There was a chorus of questions from others at the table. "Weren't
+you frightened?" "What did it do?" "How did it look?" "How was it
+dressed?" "Did it say anything?" "Didn't you scream?"
+
+"I'll try to answer everything at once," said Mrs. Bellmore,
+heroically, "although I'm frightfully hungry. Something awakened
+me--I'm not sure whether it was a noise or a touch--and there stood
+the phantom. I never burn a light at night, so the room was quite
+dark, but I saw it plainly. I wasn't dreaming. It was a tall man,
+all misty white from head to foot. It wore the full dress of the old
+Colonial days--powdered hair, baggy coat skirts, lace ruffles, and
+a sword. It looked intangible and luminous in the dark, and moved
+without a sound. Yes, I was a little frightened at first--or startled,
+I should say. It was the first ghost I had ever seen. No, it didn't
+say anything. I didn't scream. I raised up on my elbow, and then it
+glided silently away, and disappeared when it reached the door."
+
+Mrs. Kinsolving was in the seventh heaven. "The description is that of
+Captain Kinsolving, of General Greene's army, one of our ancestors,"
+she said, in a voice that trembled with pride and relief. "I really
+think I must apologize for our ghostly relative, Mrs. Bellmore. I am
+afraid he must have badly disturbed your rest."
+
+Terence sent a smile of pleased congratulation toward his mother.
+Attainment was Mrs. Kinsolving's, at last, and he loved to see her
+happy.
+
+"I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess," said Mrs. Bellmore, who
+was now enjoying her breakfast, "that I wasn't very much disturbed.
+I presume it would have been the customary thing to scream and faint,
+and have all of you running about in picturesque costumes. But, after
+the first alarm was over, I really couldn't work myself up to a panic.
+The ghost retired from the stage quietly and peacefully, after doing
+its little turn, and I went to sleep again."
+
+Nearly all listened, politely accepted Mrs. Bellmore s story as a
+made-up affair, charitably offered as an offset to the unkind vision
+seen by Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins. But one or two present perceived that
+her assertions bore the genuine stamp of her own convictions. Truth
+and candour seemed to attend upon every word. Even a scoffer at
+ghosts--if he were very observant--would have been forced to admit
+that she had, at least in a very vivid dream, been honestly aware of
+the weird visitor.'
+
+Soon Mrs. Bellmore's maid was packing. In two hours the auto would
+come to convey her to the station. As Terence was strolling upon the
+east piazza, Mrs. Bellmore came up to him, with a confidential sparkle
+in her eye.
+
+"I didn't wish to tell the others all of it," she said, "but I will
+tell you. In a way, I think you should be held responsible. Can you
+guess in what manner that ghost awakened me last night?"
+
+"Rattled chains," suggested Terence, after some thought, "or groaned?
+They usually do one or the other."
+
+"Do you happen to know," continued Mrs. Bellmore, with sudden
+irrelevancy, "if I resemble any one of the female relatives of your
+restless ancestor, Captain Kinsolving?"
+
+"Don't think so," said Terence, with an extremely puzzled air. "Never
+heard of any of them being noted beauties."
+
+"Then, why," said Mrs. Bellmore, looking the young man gravely in the
+eye, "should that ghost have kissed me, as I'm sure it did?"
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed Terence, in wide-eyed amazement; "you don't mean
+that, Mrs. Bellmore! Did he actually kiss you?"
+
+"I said _it_," corrected Mrs. Bellmore. "I hope the impersonal pronoun
+is correctly used."
+
+"But why did you say I was responsible?"
+
+"Because you are the only living male relative of the ghost."
+
+"I see. 'Unto the third and fourth generation.' But, seriously, did
+he--did it--how do you--?"
+
+"Know? How does any one know? I was asleep, and that is what awakened
+me, I'm almost certain."
+
+"Almost?"
+
+"Well, I awoke just as--oh, can't you understand what I mean? When
+anything arouses you suddenly, you are not positive whether you
+dreamed, or--and yet you know that-- Dear me, Terence, must I dissect
+the most elementary sensations in order to accommodate your extremely
+practical intelligence?"
+
+"But, about kissing ghosts, you know," said Terence, humbly, "I
+require the most primary instruction. I never kissed a ghost. Is
+it--is it--?"
+
+"The sensation," said Mrs. Bellmore, with deliberate, but slightly
+smiling, emphasis, "since you are seeking instruction, is a mingling
+of the material and the spiritual."
+
+"Of course," said Terence, suddenly growing serious, "it was a dream
+or some kind of an hallucination. Nobody believes in spirits, these
+days. If you told the tale out of kindness of heart, Mrs. Bellmore,
+I can't express how grateful I am to you. It has made my mother
+supremely happy. That Revolutionary ancestor was a stunning idea."
+
+Mrs. Bellmore sighed. "The usual fate of ghost-seers is mine," she
+said, resignedly. "My privileged encounter with a spirit is attributed
+to lobster salad or mendacity. Well, I have, at least, one memory left
+from the wreck--a kiss from the unseen world. Was Captain Kinsolving a
+very brave man, do you know, Terence?"
+
+"He was licked at Yorktown, I believe," said Terence, reflecting.
+"They say he skedaddled with his company, after the first battle
+there."
+
+"I thought he must have been timid," said Mrs. Bellmore, absently. "He
+might have had another."
+
+"Another battle?" asked Terence, dully.
+
+"What else could I mean? I must go and get ready now; the auto will
+be here in an hour. I've enjoyed Clifftop immensely. Such a lovely
+morning, isn't it, Terence?"
+
+On her way to the station, Mrs. Bellmore took from her bag a silk
+handkerchief, and looked at it with a little peculiar smile. Then she
+tied it in several very hard knots, and threw it, at a convenient
+moment, over the edge of the cliff along which the road ran.
+
+In his room, Terence was giving some directions to his man, Brooks.
+"Have this stuff done up in a parcel," he said, "and ship it to the
+address on that card."
+
+The card was that of a New York costumer. The "stuff" was a
+gentleman's costume of the days of '76, made of white satin, with
+silver buckles, white silk stockings, and white kid shoes. A powdered
+wig and a sword completed the dress.
+
+"And look about, Brooks," added Terence, a little anxiously, "for a
+silk handkerchief with my initials in one corner. I must have dropped
+it somewhere."
+
+It was a month later when Mrs. Bellmore and one or two others of
+the smart crowd were making up a list of names for a coaching trip
+through the Catskills. Mrs. Bellmore looked over the list for a final
+censoring. The name of Terence Kinsolving was there. Mrs. Bellmore ran
+her prohibitive pencil lightly through the name.
+
+"Too shy!" she murmured, sweetly, in explanation.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL
+
+
+I
+
+
+Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that
+accompanies the rolling of corn-husk cigarettes. The water hole shone
+from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped. Dull
+thumps indicated the rocking-horse movements of the hobbled ponies as
+they moved to fresh grass. A half-troop of the Frontier Battalion of
+Texas Rangers were distributed about the fire.
+
+A well-known sound--the fluttering and scraping of chaparral against
+wooden stirrups--came from the thick brush above the camp. The rangers
+listened cautiously. They heard a loud and cheerful voice call out
+reassuringly:
+
+"Brace up, Muriel, old girl, we're 'most there now! Been a long
+ride for ye, ain't it, ye old antediluvian handful of animated
+carpet-tacks? Hey, now, quit a tryin' to kiss me! Don't hold on to my
+neck so tight--this here paint hoss ain't any too shore-footed, let me
+tell ye. He's liable to dump us both off if we don't watch out."
+
+Two minutes of waiting brought a tired "paint" pony single-footing
+into camp. A gangling youth of twenty lolled in the saddle. Of the
+"Muriel" whom he had been addressing, nothing was to be seen.
+
+"Hi, fellows!" shouted the rider cheerfully. "This here's a letter fer
+Lieutenant Manning."
+
+He dismounted, unsaddled, dropped the coils of his stake-rope, and
+got his hobbles from the saddle-horn. While Lieutenant Manning, in
+command, was reading the letter, the newcomer, rubbed solicitously at
+some dried mud in the loops of the hobbles, showing a consideration
+for the forelegs of his mount.
+
+"Boys," said the lieutenant, waving his hand to the rangers, "this
+is Mr. James Hayes. He's a new member of the company. Captain McLean
+sends him down from El Paso. The boys will see that you have some
+supper, Hayes, as soon as you get your pony hobbled."
+
+The recruit was received cordially by the rangers. Still, they
+observed him shrewdly and with suspended judgment. Picking a comrade
+on the border is done with ten times the care and discretion with
+which a girl chooses a sweetheart. On your "side-kicker's" nerve,
+loyalty, aim, and coolness your own life may depend many times.
+
+After a hearty supper Hayes joined the smokers about the fire.
+His appearance did not settle all the questions in the minds of
+his brother rangers. They saw simply a loose, lank youth with
+tow-, sun-burned hair and a berry-brown, ingenuous face that
+wore a quizzical, good-natured smile.
+
+"Fellows," said the new ranger, "I'm goin' to interduce to you a lady
+friend of mine. Ain't ever heard anybody call her a beauty, but you'll
+all admit she's got some fine points about her. Come along, Muriel!"
+
+He held open the front of his blue flannel shirt. Out of it crawled a
+horned frog. A bright red ribbon was tied jauntily around its spiky
+neck. It crawled to its owner's knee and sat there, motionless.
+
+"This here Muriel," said Hayes, with an oratorical wave of his hand,
+"has got qualities. She never talks back, she always stays at home,
+and she's satisfied with one red dress for every day and Sunday, too."
+
+"Look at that blame insect!" said one of the rangers with a grin.
+"I've seen plenty of them horny frogs, but I never knew anybody to
+have one for a side-partner. Does the blame thing know you from
+anybody else?"
+
+"Take it over there and see," said Hayes.
+
+The stumpy little lizard known as the horned frog is harmless. He has
+the hideousness of the prehistoric monsters whose reduced descendant
+he is, but he is gentler than the dove.
+
+The ranger took Muriel from Hayes's knee and went back to his seat
+on a roll of blankets. The captive twisted and clawed and struggled
+vigorously in his hand. After holding it for a moment or two, the
+ranger set it upon the ground. Awkwardly, but swiftly the frog worked
+its four oddly moving legs until it stopped close by Hayes's foot.
+
+"Well, dang my hide!" said the other ranger. "The little cuss knows
+you. Never thought them insects had that much sense!"
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Jimmy Hayes became a favourite in the ranger camp. He had an endless
+store of good-nature, and a mild, perennial quality of humour that is
+well adapted to camp life. He was never without his horned frog. In
+the bosom of his shirt during rides, on his knee or shoulder in camp,
+under his blankets at night, the ugly little beast never left him.
+
+Jimmy was a humourist of a type that prevails in the rural South
+and West. Unskilled in originating methods of amusing or in witty
+conceptions, he had hit upon a comical idea and clung to it
+reverently. It had seemed to Jimmy a very funny thing to have about
+his person, with which to amuse his friends, a tame horned frog with a
+red ribbon around its neck. As it was a happy idea, why not perpetuate
+it?
+
+The sentiments existing between Jimmy and the frog cannot be exactly
+determined. The capability of the horned frog for lasting affection
+is a subject upon which we have had no symposiums. It is easier to
+guess Jimmy's feelings. Muriel was his _chef d'oeuvre_ of wit, and as
+such he cherished her. He caught flies for her, and shielded her from
+sudden northers. Yet his care was half selfish, and when the time came
+she repaid him a thousand fold. Other Muriels have thus overbalanced
+the light attentions of other Jimmies.
+
+Not at once did Jimmy Hayes attain full brotherhood with his comrades.
+They loved him for his simplicity and drollness, but there hung above
+him a great sword of suspended judgment. To make merry in camp is not
+all of a ranger's life. There are horse-thieves to trail, desperate
+criminals to run down, bravos to battle with, bandits to rout out of
+the chaparral, peace and order to be compelled at the muzzle of a
+six-shooter. Jimmy had been "'most generally a cow-puncher," he said;
+he was inexperienced in ranger methods of warfare. Therefore the
+rangers speculated apart and solemnly as to how he would stand fire.
+For, let it be known, the honour and pride of each ranger company is
+the individual bravery of its members.
+
+For two months the border was quiet. The rangers lolled, listless,
+in camp. And then--bringing joy to the rusting guardians of the
+frontier--Sebastiano Saldar, an eminent Mexican desperado and
+cattle-thief, crossed the Rio Grande with his gang and began to lay
+waste the Texas side. There were indications that Jimmy Hayes would
+soon have the opportunity to show his mettle. The rangers patrolled
+with alacrity, but Saldar's men were mounted like Lochinvar, and were
+hard to catch.
+
+One evening, about sundown, the rangers halted for supper after a
+long ride. Their horses stood panting, with their saddles on. The
+men were frying bacon and boiling coffee. Suddenly, out of the
+brush, Sebastiano Saldar and his gang dashed upon them with blazing
+six-shooters and high-voiced yells. It was a neat surprise. The
+rangers swore in annoyed tones, and got their Winchesters busy; but
+the attack was only a spectacular dash of the purest Mexican type.
+After the florid demonstration the raiders galloped away, yelling,
+down the river. The rangers mounted and pursued; but in less than two
+miles the fagged ponies laboured so that Lieutenant Manning gave the
+word to abandon the chase and return to the camp.
+
+Then it was discovered that Jimmy Hayes was missing. Some one
+remembered having seen him run for his pony when the attack began, but
+no one had set eyes on him since. Morning came, but no Jimmy. They
+searched the country around, on the theory that he had been killed or
+wounded, but without success. Then they followed after Saldar's gang,
+but it seemed to have disappeared. Manning concluded that the wily
+Mexican had recrossed the river after his theatric farewell. And,
+indeed, no further depredations from him were reported.
+
+This gave the rangers time to nurse a soreness they had. As has been
+said, the pride and honour of the company is the individual bravery of
+its members. And now they believed that Jimmy Hayes had turned coward
+at the whiz of Mexican bullets. There was no other deduction. Buck
+Davis pointed out that not a shot was fired by Saldar's gang after
+Jimmy was seen running for his horse. There was no way for him to
+have been shot. No, he had fled from his first fight, and afterward
+he would not return, aware that the scorn of his comrades would be a
+worse thing to face than the muzzles of many rifles.
+
+So Manning's detachment of McLean's company, Frontier Battalion, was
+gloomy. It was the first blot on its escutcheon. Never before in the
+history of the service had a ranger shown the white feather. All of
+them had liked Jimmy Hayes, and that made it worse.
+
+Days, weeks, and months went by, and still that little cloud of
+unforgotten cowardice hung above the camp.
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Nearly a year afterward--after many camping grounds and many hundreds
+of miles guarded and defended--Lieutenant Manning, with almost the
+same detachment of men, was sent to a point only a few miles below
+their old camp on the river to look after some smuggling there. One
+afternoon, while they were riding through a dense mesquite flat, they
+came upon a patch of open hog-wallow prairie. There they rode upon the
+scene of an unwritten tragedy.
+
+In a big hog-wallow lay the skeletons of three Mexicans. Their
+clothing alone served to identify them. The largest of the figures had
+once been Sebastiano Saldar. His great, costly sombrero, heavy with
+gold ornamentation--a hat famous all along the Rio Grande--lay there
+pierced by three bullets. Along the ridge of the hog-wallow rested
+the rusting Winchesters of the Mexicans--all pointing in the same
+direction.
+
+The rangers rode in that direction for fifty yards. There, in a little
+depression of the ground, with his rifle still bearing upon the three,
+lay another skeleton. It had been a battle of extermination. There was
+nothing to identify the solitary defender. His clothing--such as the
+elements had left distinguishable--seemed to be of the kind that any
+ranchman or cowboy might have worn.
+
+"Some cow-puncher," said Manning, "that they caught out alone. Good
+boy! He put up a dandy scrap before they got him. So that's why we
+didn't hear from Don Sebastiano any more!"
+
+And then, from beneath the weather-beaten rags of the dead man, there
+wriggled out a horned frog with a faded red ribbon around its neck,
+and sat upon the shoulder of its long quiet master. Mutely it told the
+story of the untried youth and the swift "paint" pony--how they had
+outstripped all their comrades that day in the pursuit of the Mexican
+raiders, and how the boy had gone down upholding the honour of the
+company.
+
+The ranger troop herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from
+their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph,
+and a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body
+of a fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he would
+have understood.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE DOOR OF UNREST
+
+
+I sat an hour by sun, in the editor's room of the Montopolis _Weekly
+Bugle_. I was the editor.
+
+The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the
+cornstalks in Micajah Widdup's garden-patch, and cast an amber glory
+upon my paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary
+revolving chair, and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies.
+The room, with its one window, was already a prey to the twilight.
+One by one, with my trenchant sentences, I lopped off the heads of
+the political hydra, while I listened, full of kindly peace, to the
+home-coming cow-bells and wondered what Mrs. Flanagan was going to
+have for supper.
+
+Then in from the dusky, quiet street there drifted and perched himself
+upon a corner of my desk old Father Time's younger brother. His
+face was beardless and as gnarled as an English walnut. I never saw
+clothes such as he wore. They would have reduced Joseph's coat to a
+monochrome. But the colours were not the dyer's. Stains and patches
+and the work of sun and rust were responsible for the diversity. On
+his coarse shoes was the dust, conceivably, of a thousand leagues.
+I can describe him no further, except to say that he was little and
+weird and old--old I began to estimate in centuries when I saw him.
+Yes, and I remember that there was an odour, a faint odour like aloes,
+or possibly like myrrh or leather; and I thought of museums.
+
+And then I reached for a pad and pencil, for business is business, and
+visits of the oldest inhabitants are sacred and honourable, requiring
+to be chronicled.
+
+"I am glad to see you, sir," I said. "I would offer you a chair,
+but--you see, sir," I went on, "I have lived in Montopolis only three
+weeks, and I have not met many of our citizens." I turned a doubtful
+eye upon his dust-stained shoes, and concluded with a newspaper
+phrase, "I suppose that you reside in our midst?"
+
+My visitor fumbled in his raiment, drew forth a soiled card, and
+handed it to me. Upon it was written, in plain but unsteadily formed
+characters, the name "Michob Ader."
+
+"I am glad you called, Mr. Ader," I said. "As one of our older
+citizens, you must view with pride the recent growth and enterprise of
+Montopolis. Among other improvements, I think I can promise that the
+town will now be provided with a live, enterprising newspa--"
+
+"Do ye know the name on that card?" asked my caller, interrupting me.
+
+"It is not a familiar one to me," I said.
+
+Again he visited the depths of his ancient vestments. This time he
+brought out a torn leaf of some book or journal, brown and flimsy with
+age. The heading of the page was the _Turkish Spy_ in old-style type;
+the printing upon it was this:
+
+"There is a man come to Paris in this year 1643 who pretends to have
+lived these sixteen hundred years. He says of himself that he was a
+shoemaker in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion; that his name
+is Michob Ader; and that when Jesus, the Christian Messias, was
+condemned by Pontius Pilate, the Roman president, he paused to rest
+while bearing his cross to the place of crucifixion before the door of
+Michob Ader. The shoemaker struck Jesus with his fist, saying: 'Go;
+why tarriest thou?' The Messias answered him: 'I indeed am going; but
+thou shalt tarry until I come'; thereby condemning him to live until
+the day of judgment. He lives forever, but at the end of every hundred
+years he falls into a fit or trance, on recovering from which he finds
+himself in the same state of youth in which he was when Jesus
+suffered, being then about thirty years of age.
+
+"Such is the story of the Wandering Jew, as told by Michob Ader, who
+relates--" Here the printing ended.
+
+I must have muttered aloud something to myself about the Wandering
+Jew, for the old man spake up, bitterly and loudly.
+
+"'Tis a lie," said he, "like nine tenths of what ye call history. 'Tis
+a Gentile I am, and no Jew. I am after footing it out of Jerusalem,
+my son; but if that makes me a Jew, then everything that comes out of
+a bottle is babies' milk. Ye have my name on the card ye hold; and ye
+have read the bit of paper they call the _Turkish Spy_ that printed
+the news when I stepped into their office on the 12th day of June, in
+the year 1643, just as I have called upon ye to-day."
+
+I laid down my pencil and pad. Clearly it would not do. Here was an
+item for the local column of the _Bugle_ that--but it would not do.
+Still, fragments of the impossible "personal" began to flit through
+my conventionalized brain. "Uncle Michob is as spry on his legs as a
+young chap of only a thousand or so." "Our venerable caller relates
+with pride that George Wash--no, Ptolemy the Great--once dandled him
+on his knee at his father's house." "Uncle Michob says that our wet
+spring was nothing in comparison with the dampness that ruined the
+crops around Mount Ararat when he was a boy--" But no, no--it would
+not do.
+
+I was trying to think of some conversational subject with which to
+interest my visitor, and was hesitating between walking matches and
+the Pliocene age, when the old man suddenly began to weep poignantly
+and distressfully.
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Ader," I said, a little awkwardly; "this matter may
+blow over in a few hundred years more. There has already been a
+decided reaction in favour of Judas Iscariot and Colonel Burr and the
+celebrated violinist, Signor Nero. This is the age of whitewash. You
+must not allow yourself to become down-hearted."
+
+Unknowingly, I had struck a chord. The old man blinked belligerently
+through his senile tears.
+
+"'Tis time," he said, "that the liars be doin' justice to somebody.
+Yer historians are no more than a pack of old women gabblin' at a
+wake. A finer man than the Imperor Nero niver wore sandals. Man, I was
+at the burnin' of Rome. I knowed the Imperor well, for in them days I
+was a well-known char-acter. In thim days they had rayspect for a man
+that lived forever.
+
+"But 'twas of the Imperor Nero I was goin' to tell ye. I struck into
+Rome, up the Appian Way, on the night of July the 16th, the year 64. I
+had just stepped down by way of Siberia and Afghanistan; and one foot
+of me had a frost-bite, and the other a blister burned by the sand of
+the desert; and I was feelin' a bit blue from doin' patrol duty from
+the North Pole down to the Last Chance corner in Patagonia, and bein'
+miscalled a Jew in the bargain. Well, I'm tellin' ye I was passin'
+the Circus Maximus, and it was dark as pitch over the way, and then I
+heard somebody sing out, 'Is that you, Michob?'
+
+"Over ag'inst the wall, hid out amongst a pile of barrels and old
+dry-goods boxes, was the Imperor Nero wid his togy wrapped around his
+toes, smokin' a long, black segar.
+
+"'Have one, Michob?' says he.
+
+"'None of the weeds for me,' says I--'nayther pipe nor segar. What's
+the use,' says I, 'of smokin' when ye've not got the ghost of a chance
+of killin' yeself by doin' it?'
+
+"'True for ye, Michob Ader, my perpetual Jew,' says the Imperor;
+'ye're not always wandering. Sure, 'tis danger gives the spice of our
+pleasures--next to their bein' forbidden.'
+
+"'And for what,' says I, 'do ye smoke be night in dark places widout
+even a cinturion in plain clothes to attend ye?'
+
+"'Have ye ever heard, Michob,' says the Imperor, 'of
+predestinarianism?'
+
+"'I've had the cousin of it,' says I. 'I've been on the trot with
+pedestrianism for many a year, and more to come, as ye well know.'
+
+"'The longer word,' says me friend Nero, 'is the tachin' of this new
+sect of people they call the Christians. 'Tis them that's raysponsible
+for me smokin' be night in holes and corners of the dark.'
+
+"And then I sets down and takes off a shoe and rubs me foot that is
+frosted, and the Imperor tells me about it. It seems that since I
+passed that way before, the Imperor had mandamused the Impress wid
+a divorce suit, and Misses Poppaea, a cilibrated lady, was ingaged,
+widout riferences, as housekeeper at the palace. 'All in one day,'
+says the Imperor, 'she puts up new lace windy-curtains in the palace
+and joins the anti-tobacco society, and whin I feels the need of a
+smoke I must be after sneakin' out to these piles of lumber in the
+dark.' So there in the dark me and the Imperor sat, and I told him of
+me travels. And when they say the Imperor was an incindiary, they lie.
+'Twas that night the fire started that burnt the city. 'Tis my opinion
+that it began from a stump of segar that he threw down among the
+boxes. And 'tis a lie that he fiddled. He did all he could for six
+days to stop it, sir."
+
+And now I detected a new flavour to Mr. Michob Ader. It had not been
+myrrh or balm or hyssop that I had smelled. The emanation was the
+odour of bad whiskey--and, worse still, of low comedy--the sort that
+small humorists manufacture by clothing the grave and reverend things
+of legend and history in the vulgar, topical frippery that passes for
+a certain kind of wit. Michob Ader as an impostor, claiming nineteen
+hundred years, and playing his part with the decency of respectable
+lunacy, I could endure; but as a tedious wag, cheapening his egregious
+story with song-book levity, his importance as an entertainer grew
+less.
+
+And then, as if he suspected my thoughts, he suddenly shifted his key.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir," he whined, "but sometimes I get a little
+mixed in my head. I am a very old man; and it is hard to remember
+everything."
+
+I knew that he was right, and that I should not try to reconcile him
+with Roman history; so I asked for news concerning other ancients with
+whom he had walked familiar.
+
+Above my desk hung an engraving of Raphael's cherubs. You could yet
+make out their forms, though the dust blurred their outlines
+strangely.
+
+"Ye calls them 'cher-rubs'," cackled the old man. "Babes, ye
+fancy they are, with wings. And there's one wid legs and a bow
+and arrow that ye call Cupid--I know where they was found. The
+great-great-great-grandfather of thim all was a billy-goat. Bein' an
+editor, sir, do ye happen to know where Solomon s Temple stood?"
+
+I fancied that it was in--in Persia? Well, I did not know.
+
+"'Tis not in history nor in the Bible where it was. But I saw it,
+meself. The first pictures of cher-rubs and cupids was sculptured upon
+thim walls and pillars. Two of the biggest, sir, stood in the adytum
+to form the baldachin over the Ark. But the wings of thim sculptures
+was intindid for horns. And the faces was the faces of goats. Ten
+thousand goats there was in and about the temple. And your cher-rubs
+was billy-goats in the days of King Solomon, but the painters
+misconstrued the horns into wings.
+
+"And I knew Tamerlane, the lame Timour, sir, very well. I saw him at
+Keghut and at Zaranj. He was a little man no larger than yerself, with
+hair the colour of an amber pipe stem. They buried him at Samarkand.
+I was at the wake, sir. Oh, he was a fine-built man in his coffin,
+six feet long, with black whiskers to his face. And I see 'em throw
+turnips at the Imperor Vispacian in Africa. All over the world I
+have tramped, sir, without the body of me findin' any rest. 'Twas
+so commanded. I saw Jerusalem destroyed, and Pompeii go up in the
+fireworks; and I was at the coronation of Charlemagne and the lynchin'
+of Joan of Arc. And everywhere I go there comes storms and revolutions
+and plagues and fires. 'Twas so commanded. Ye have heard of the
+Wandering Jew. 'Tis all so, except that divil a bit am I a Jew. But
+history lies, as I have told ye. Are ye quite sure, sir, that ye
+haven't a drop of whiskey convenient? Ye well know that I have many
+miles of walking before me."
+
+"I have none," said I, "and, if you please, I am about to leave for my
+supper."
+
+I pushed my chair back creakingly. This ancient landlubber was
+becoming as great an affliction as any cross-bowed mariner. He shook a
+musty effluvium from his piebald clothes, overturned my inkstand, and
+went on with his insufferable nonsense.
+
+"I wouldn't mind it so much," he complained, "if it wasn't for the
+work I must do on Good Fridays. Ye know about Pontius Pilate, sir, of
+course. His body, whin he killed himself, was pitched into a lake on
+the Alps mountains. Now, listen to the job that 'tis mine to perform
+on the night of ivery Good Friday. The ould divil goes down in the
+pool and drags up Pontius, and the water is bilin' and spewin' like a
+wash pot. And the ould divil sets the body on top of a throne on the
+rocks, and thin comes me share of the job. Oh, sir, ye would pity me
+thin--ye would pray for the poor Wandering Jew that niver was a Jew if
+ye could see the horror of the thing that I must do. 'Tis I that must
+fetch a bowl of water and kneel down before it till it washes its
+hands. I declare to ye that Pontius Pilate, a man dead two hundred
+years, dragged up with the lake slime coverin' him and fishes
+wrigglin' inside of him widout eyes, and in the discomposition of the
+body, sits there, sir, and washes his hands in the bowl I hold for him
+on Good Fridays. 'Twas so commanded."
+
+Clearly, the matter had progressed far beyond the scope of the
+_Bugle's_ local column. There might have been employment here for the
+alienist or for those who circulate the pledge; but I had had enough
+of it. I got up, and repeated that I must go.
+
+At this he seized my coat, grovelled upon my desk, and burst again
+into distressful weeping. Whatever it was about, I said to myself that
+his grief was genuine.
+
+"Come now, Mr. Ader," I said, soothingly; "what is the matter?"
+
+The answer came brokenly through his racking sobs:
+
+"Because I would not . . . let the poor Christ . . . rest . . . upon
+the step."
+
+His hallucination seemed beyond all reasonable answer; yet the effect
+of it upon him scarcely merited disrespect. But I knew nothing that
+might assuage it; and I told him once more that both of us should be
+leaving the office at once.
+
+Obedient at last, he raised himself from my dishevelled desk, and
+permitted me to half lift him to the floor. The gale of his grief had
+blown away his words; his freshet of tears had soaked away the crust
+of his grief. Reminiscence died in him--at least, the coherent part of
+it.
+
+"'Twas me that did it," he muttered, as I led him toward the
+door--"me, the shoemaker of Jerusalem."
+
+I got him to the sidewalk, and in the augmented light I saw that his
+face was seared and lined and warped by a sadness almost incredibly
+the product of a single lifetime.
+
+And then high up in the firmamental darkness we heard the clamant
+cries of some great, passing birds. My Wandering Jew lifted his hand,
+with side-tilted head.
+
+"The Seven Whistlers!" he said, as one introduces well-known friends.
+
+"Wild geese," said I; "but I confess that their number is beyond me."
+
+"They follow me everywhere," he said. "'Twas so commanded. What ye
+hear is the souls of the seven Jews that helped with the Crucifixion.
+Sometimes they're plovers and sometimes geese, but ye'll find them
+always flyin' where I go."
+
+I stood, uncertain how to take my leave. I looked down the street,
+shuffled my feet, looked back again--and felt my hair rise. The old
+man had disappeared.
+
+And then my capillaries relaxed, for I dimly saw him footing it away
+through the darkness. But he walked so swiftly and silently and
+contrary to the gait promised by his age that my composure was not all
+restored, though I knew not why.
+
+That night I was foolish enough to take down some dust-covered
+volumes from my modest shelves. I searched "Hermippus Redivvus" and
+"Salathiel" and the "Pepys Collection" in vain. And then in a book
+called "The Citizen of the World," and in one two centuries old, I
+came upon what I desired. Michob Ader had indeed come to Paris in the
+year 1643, and related to the _Turkish Spy_ an extraordinary story. He
+claimed to be the Wandering Jew, and that--
+
+But here I fell asleep, for my editorial duties had not been light
+that day.
+
+Judge Hoover was the _Bugle's_ candidate for congress. Having to
+confer with him, I sought his home early the next morning; and we
+walked together down town through a little street with which I was
+unfamiliar.
+
+"Did you ever hear of Michob Ader?" I asked him, smiling.
+
+"Why, yes," said the judge. "And that reminds me of my shoes he has
+for mending. Here is his shop now."
+
+Judge Hoover stepped into a dingy, small shop. I looked up at the
+sign, and saw "Mike O'Bader, Boot and Shoe Maker," on it. Some wild
+geese passed above, honking clearly. I scratched my ear and frowned,
+and then trailed into the shop.
+
+There sat my Wandering Jew on his shoemaker's bench, trimming a
+half-sole. He was drabbled with dew, grass-stained, unkempt, and
+miserable; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness, the
+problematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by
+nothing less, it seemed, than the stylus of the centuries.
+
+Judge Hoover inquired kindly concerning his shoes. The old shoemaker
+looked up, and spoke sanely enough. He had been ill, he said, for a
+few days. The next day the shoes would be ready. He looked at me, and
+I could see that I had no place in his memory. So out we went, and on
+our way.
+
+"Old Mike," remarked the candidate, "has been on one of his sprees. He
+gets crazy drunk regularly once a month. But he's a good shoemaker."
+
+"What is his history?" I inquired.
+
+"Whiskey," epitomized Judge Hoover. "That explains him."
+
+I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had
+the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who browsed daily on my
+exchanges.
+
+"Mike O'Bader," said he, "was makin' shoes in Montopolis when I come
+here goin' on fifteen year ago. I guess whiskey's his trouble. Once a
+month he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He's got a rigmarole
+somethin' about his bein' a Jew pedler that he tells ev'rybody.
+Nobody won't listen to him any more. When he's sober he ain't sich a
+fool--he's got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he
+reads. I guess you can lay all his trouble to whiskey."
+
+But again I would not. Not yet was my Wandering Jew rightly construed
+for me. I trust that women may not be allowed a title to all the
+curiosity in the world. So when Montopolis's oldest inhabitant
+(some ninety score years younger than Michob Ader) dropped in to
+acquire promulgation in print, I siphoned his perpetual trickle of
+reminiscence in the direction of the uninterpreted maker of shoes.
+
+Uncle Abner was the Complete History of Montopolis, bound in
+butternut.
+
+"O'Bader," he quavered, "come here in '69. He was the first shoemaker
+in the place. Folks generally considers him crazy at times now. But
+he don't harm nobody. I s'pose drinkin' upset his mind--yes, drinkin'
+very likely done it. It's a powerful bad thing, drinkin'. I'm an old,
+old man, sir, and I never see no good in drinkin'."
+
+I felt disappointment. I was willing to admit drink in the case of my
+shoemaker, but I preferred it as a recourse instead of a cause. Why
+had he pitched upon his perpetual, strange note of the Wandering
+Jew? Why his unutterable grief during his aberration? I could not yet
+accept whiskey as an explanation.
+
+"Did Mike O'Bader ever have a great loss or trouble of any kind?" I
+asked.
+
+"Lemme see! About thirty year ago there was somethin' of the kind, I
+recollect. Montopolis, sir, in them days used to be a mighty strict
+place.
+
+"Well, Mike O'Bader had a daughter then--a right pretty girl. She was
+too gay a sort for Montopolis, so one day she slips off to another
+town and runs away with a circus. It was two years before she comes
+back, all fixed up in fine clothes and rings and jewellery, to see
+Mike. He wouldn't have nothin' to do with her, so she stays around
+town awhile, anyway. I reckon the men folks wouldn't have raised no
+objections, but the women egged 'em on to order her to leave town. But
+she had plenty of spunk, and told 'em to mind their own business.
+
+"So one night they decided to run her away. A crowd of men and women
+drove her out of her house, and chased her with sticks and stones. She
+run to her father's door, callin' for help. Mike opens it, and when he
+sees who it is he hits her with his fist and knocks her down and shuts
+the door.
+
+"And then the crowd kept on chunkin' her till she run clear out of
+town. And the next day they finds her drowned dead in Hunter's mill
+pond. I mind it all now. That was thirty year ago."
+
+I leaned back in my non-rotary revolving chair and nodded gently, like
+a mandarin, at my paste-pot.
+
+"When old Mike has a spell," went on Uncle Abner, tepidly garrulous,
+"he thinks he's the Wanderin' Jew."
+
+"He is," said I, nodding away.
+
+And Uncle Abner cackled insinuatingly at the editor's remark, for he
+was expecting at least a "stickful" in the "Personal Notes" of the
+_Bugle_.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES
+
+
+When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss
+Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a
+boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the
+quietest avenues. It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a
+portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded by stately
+locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and
+white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of high box bushes lined the fence
+and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that
+pleased the eyes of the Talbots.
+
+In this pleasant, private boarding house they engaged rooms, including
+a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his
+book, "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and
+Bar."
+
+Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little
+interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period
+before the Civil War, when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of
+fine cotton land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion
+was the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the
+aristocracy of the South. Out of that period he had brought all its
+old pride and scruples of honour, an antiquated and punctilious
+politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe.
+
+Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The major was
+tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he
+called a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That
+garment was a surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased
+to shy at the frocks and broadbrimmed hats of Southern congressmen.
+One of the boarders christened it a "Father Hubbard," and it certainly
+was high in the waist and full in the skirt.
+
+But the major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of
+plaited, ravelling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with
+the bow always slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in
+Mrs. Vardeman' s select boarding house. Some of the young department
+clerks would often "string him," as they called it, getting him
+started upon the subject dearest to him--the traditions and history of
+his beloved Southland. During his talks he would quote freely from the
+"Anecdotes and Reminiscences." But they were very careful not to let
+him see their designs, for in spite of his sixty-eight years, he could
+make the boldest of them uncomfortable under the steady regard of his
+piercing gray eyes.
+
+Miss Lydia was a plump, little old maid of thirty-five, with smoothly
+drawn, tightly twisted hair that made her look still older. Old
+fashioned, too, she was; but ante-bellum glory did not radiate from
+her as it did from the major. She possessed a thrifty common sense;
+and it was she who handled the finances of the family, and met all
+comers when there were bills to pay. The major regarded board bills
+and wash bills as contemptible nuisances. They kept coming in so
+persistently and so often. Why, the major wanted to know, could they
+not be filed and paid in a lump sum at some convenient period--say
+when the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" had been published and paid
+for? Miss Lydia would calmly go on with her sewing and say, "We'll pay
+as we go as long as the money lasts, and then perhaps they'll have to
+lump it."
+
+Most of Mrs. Vardeman's boarders were away during the day, being
+nearly all department clerks and business men; but there was one of
+them who was about the house a great deal from morning to night. This
+was a young man named Henry Hopkins Hargraves--every one in the house
+addressed him by his full name--who was engaged at one of the popular
+vaudeville theatres. Vaudeville has risen to such a respectable
+plane in the last few years, and Mr. Hargraves was such a modest and
+well-mannered person, that Mrs. Vardeman could find no objection to
+enrolling him upon her list of boarders.
+
+At the theatre Hargraves was known as an all-round dialect comedian,
+having a large repertoire of German, Irish, Swede, and black-face
+specialties. But Mr. Hargraves was ambitious, and often spoke of his
+great desire to succeed in legitimate comedy.
+
+This young man appeared to conceive a strong fancy for Major Talbot.
+Whenever that gentleman would begin his Southern reminiscences, or
+repeat some of the liveliest of the anecdotes, Hargraves could always
+be found, the most attentive among his listeners.
+
+For a time the major showed an inclination to discourage the advances
+of the "play actor," as he privately termed him; but soon the young
+man's agreeable manner and indubitable appreciation of the old
+gentleman's stories completely won him over.
+
+It was not long before the two were like old chums. The major set
+apart each afternoon to read to him the manuscript of his book. During
+the anecdotes Hargraves never failed to laugh at exactly the right
+point. The major was moved to declare to Miss Lydia one day that young
+Hargraves possessed remarkable perception and a gratifying respect
+for the old regime. And when it came to talking of those old days--if
+Major Talbot liked to talk, Mr. Hargraves was entranced to listen.
+
+Like almost all old people who talk of the past, the major loved to
+linger over details. In describing the splendid, almost royal, days
+of the old planters, he would hesitate until he had recalled the name
+of the <DW64> who held his horse, or the exact date of certain minor
+happenings, or the number of bales of cotton raised in such a year;
+but Hargraves never grew impatient or lost interest. On the contrary,
+he would advance questions on a variety of subjects connected with the
+life of that time, and he never failed to extract ready replies.
+
+The fox hunts, the 'possum suppers, the hoe downs and jubilees in
+the <DW64> quarters, the banquets in the plantation-house hall, when
+invitations went for fifty miles around; the occasional feuds with the
+neighbouring gentry; the major's duel with Rathbone Culbertson about
+Kitty Chalmers, who afterward married a Thwaite of South Carolina;
+and private yacht races for fabulous sums on Mobile Bay; the quaint
+beliefs, improvident habits, and loyal virtues of the old slaves--all
+these were subjects that held both the major and Hargraves absorbed
+for hours at a time.
+
+Sometimes, at night, when the young man would be coming upstairs to
+his room after his turn at the theatre was over, the major would
+appear at the door of his study and beckon archly to him. Going in,
+Hargraves would find a little table set with a decanter, sugar bowl,
+fruit, and a big bunch of fresh green mint.
+
+"It occurred to me," the major would begin--he was always
+ceremonious--"that perhaps you might have found your duties at the--at
+your place of occupation--sufficiently arduous to enable you, Mr.
+Hargraves, to appreciate what the poet might well have had in his mind
+when he wrote, 'tired Nature's sweet restorer,'--one of our Southern
+juleps."
+
+It was a fascination to Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank
+among artists when he began, and he never varied the process. With
+what delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he
+estimated the ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the
+compound with the scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe!
+And then the hospitality and grace with which he offered it, after the
+selected oat straws had been plunged into its tinkling depths!
+
+After about four months in Washington, Miss Lydia discovered one
+morning that they were almost without money. The "Anecdotes and
+Reminiscences" was completed, but publishers had not jumped at the
+collected gems of Alabama sense and wit. The rental of a small house
+which they still owned in Mobile was two months in arrears. Their
+board money for the month would be due in three days. Miss Lydia
+called her father to a consultation.
+
+"No money?" said he with a surprised look. "It is quite annoying to be
+called on so frequently for these petty sums. Really, I--"
+
+The major searched his pockets. He found only a two-dollar bill, which
+he returned to his vest pocket.
+
+"I must attend to this at once, Lydia," he said. "Kindly get me my
+umbrella and I will go down town immediately. The congressman from our
+district, General Fulghum, assured me some days ago that he would use
+his influence to get my book published at an early date. I will go to
+his hotel at once and see what arrangement has been made."
+
+With a sad little smile Miss Lydia watched him button his "Father
+Hubbard" and depart, pausing at the door, as he always did, to bow
+profoundly.
+
+That evening, at dark, he returned. It seemed that Congressman Fulghum
+had seen the publisher who had the major's manuscript for reading.
+That person had said that if the anecdotes, etc., were carefully
+pruned down about one half, in order to eliminate the sectional and
+class prejudice with which the book was dyed from end to end, he might
+consider its publication.
+
+The major was in a white heat of anger, but regained his equanimity,
+according to his code of manners, as soon as he was in Miss Lydia's
+presence.
+
+"We must have money," said Miss Lydia, with a little wrinkle above her
+nose. "Give me the two dollars, and I will telegraph to Uncle Ralph
+for some to-night."
+
+The major drew a small envelope from his upper vest pocket and tossed
+it on the table.
+
+"Perhaps it was injudicious," he said mildly, "but the sum was so
+merely nominal that I bought tickets to the theatre to-night. It's a
+new war drama, Lydia. I thought you would be pleased to witness its
+first production in Washington. I am told that the South has very fair
+treatment in the play. I confess I should like to see the performance
+myself."
+
+Miss Lydia threw up her hands in silent despair.
+
+Still, as the tickets were bought, they might as well be used. So that
+evening, as they sat in the theatre listening to the lively overture,
+even Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour,
+to second place. The major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary
+coat showing only where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair
+smoothly roached, looked really fine and distinguished. The curtain
+went up on the first act of "A Magnolia Flower," revealing a typical
+Southern plantation scene. Major Talbot betrayed some interest.
+
+"Oh, see!" exclaimed Miss Lydia, nudging his arm, and pointing to her
+programme.
+
+The major put on his glasses and read the line in the cast of
+characters that her finger indicated.
+
+
+   Col. Webster Calhoun . . . . H. Hopkins Hargraves.
+
+
+"It's our Mr. Hargraves," said Miss Lydia. "It must be his first
+appearance in what he calls 'the legitimate.' I'm so glad for him."
+
+Not until the second act did Col. Webster Calhoun appear upon the
+stage. When he made his entry Major Talbot gave an audible sniff,
+glared at him, and seemed to freeze solid. Miss Lydia uttered a
+little, ambiguous squeak and crumpled her programme in her hand. For
+Colonel Calhoun was made up as nearly resembling Major Talbot as one
+pea does another. The long, thin white hair, curly at the ends, the
+aristocratic beak of a nose, the crumpled, wide, ravelling shirt
+front, the string tie, with the bow nearly under one ear, were almost
+exactly duplicated. And then, to clinch the imitation, he wore the
+twin to the major's supposed to be unparalleled coat. High-collared,
+baggy, empire-waisted, ample-skirted, hanging a foot lower in front
+than behind, the garment could have been designed from no other
+pattern. From then on, the major and Miss Lydia sat bewitched, and
+saw the counterfeit presentment of a haughty Talbot "dragged," as
+the major afterward expressed it, "through the slanderous mire of a
+corrupt stage."
+
+Mr. Hargraves had used his opportunities well. He had caught the
+major's little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation
+and his pompous courtliness to perfection--exaggerating all to the
+purposes of the stage. When he performed that marvellous bow that the
+major fondly imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience
+sent forth a sudden round of hearty applause.
+
+Miss Lydia sat immovable, not daring to glance toward her father.
+Sometimes her hand next to him would be laid against her cheek, as if
+to conceal the smile which, in spite of her disapproval, she could not
+entirely suppress.
+
+The culmination of Hargraves's audacious imitation took place in the
+third act. The scene is where Colonel Calhoun entertains a few of the
+neighbouring planters in his "den."
+
+Standing at a table in the centre of the stage, with his friends
+grouped about him, he delivers that inimitable, rambling, character
+monologue so famous in "A Magnolia Flower," at the same time that he
+deftly makes juleps for the party.
+
+Major Talbot, sitting quietly, but white with indignation, heard
+his best stories retold, his pet theories and hobbies advanced and
+expanded, and the dream of the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" served,
+exaggerated and garbled. His favourite narrative--that of his duel
+with Rathbone Culbertson--was not omitted, and it was delivered with
+more fire, egotism, and gusto than the major himself put into it.
+
+The monologue concluded with a quaint, delicious, witty little
+lecture on the art of concocting a julep, illustrated by the act.
+Here Major Talbot's delicate but showy science was reproduced to a
+hair's breadth--from his dainty handling of the fragrant weed--"the
+one-thousandth part of a grain too much pressure, gentlemen, and you
+extract the bitterness, instead of the aroma, of this heaven-bestowed
+plant"--to his solicitous selection of the oaten straws.
+
+At the close of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of
+appreciation. The portrayal of the type was so exact, so sure and
+thorough, that the leading characters in the play were forgotten.
+After repeated calls, Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his
+rather boyish face bright and flushed with the knowledge of success.
+
+At last Miss Lydia turned and looked at the major. His thin nostrils
+were working like the gills of a fish. He laid both shaking hands upon
+the arms of his chair to rise.
+
+"We will go, Lydia," he said chokingly. "This is an
+abominable--desecration."
+
+Before he could rise, she pulled him back into his seat. "We will
+stay it out," she declared. "Do you want to advertise the copy by
+exhibiting the original coat?" So they remained to the end.
+
+Hargraves's success must have kept him up late that night, for neither
+at the breakfast nor at the dinner table did he appear.
+
+About three in the afternoon he tapped at the door of Major Talbot's
+study. The major opened it, and Hargraves walked in with his hands
+full of the morning papers--too full of his triumph to notice anything
+unusual in the major's demeanour.
+
+"I put it all over 'em last night, major," he began exultantly. "I had
+my inning, and, I think, scored. Here's what the _Post_ says:
+
+
+   His conception and portrayal of the old-time Southern colonel,
+   with his absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric garb, his quaint
+   idioms and phrases, his moth-eaten pride of family, and his
+   really kind heart, fastidious sense of honour, and lovable
+   simplicity, is the best delineation of a character role on
+   the boards to-day. The coat worn by Colonel Calhoun is itself
+   nothing less than an evolution of genius. Mr. Hargraves has
+   captured his public.
+
+
+"How does that sound, major, for a first nighter?"
+
+"I had the honour"--the major's voice sounded ominously frigid--"of
+witnessing your very remarkable performance, sir, last night."
+
+Hargraves looked disconcerted.
+
+"You were there? I didn't know you ever--I didn't know you cared for
+the theatre. Oh, I say, Major Talbot," he exclaimed frankly, "don't
+you be offended. I admit I did get a lot of pointers from you that
+helped me out wonderfully in the part. But it's a type, you know--not
+individual. The way the audience caught on shows that. Half the
+patrons of that theatre are Southerners. They recognized it."
+
+"Mr. Hargraves," said the major, who had remained standing, "you have
+put upon me an unpardonable insult. You have burlesqued my person,
+grossly betrayed my confidence, and misused my hospitality. If I
+thought you possessed the faintest conception of what is the sign
+manual of a gentleman, or what is due one, I would call you out, sir,
+old as I am. I will ask you to leave the room, sir."
+
+The actor appeared to be slightly bewildered, and seemed hardly to
+take in the full meaning of the old gentleman's words.
+
+"I am truly sorry you took offence," he said regretfully. "Up here we
+don't look at things just as you people do. I know men who would buy
+out half the house to have their personality put on the stage so the
+public would recognize it."
+
+"They are not from Alabama, sir," said the major haughtily.
+
+"Perhaps not. I have a pretty good memory, major; let me quote a
+few lines from your book. In response to a toast at a banquet given
+in--Milledgeville, I believe--you uttered, and intend to have printed,
+these words:
+
+
+   The Northern man is utterly without sentiment or warmth except
+   in so far as the feelings may be turned to his own commercial
+   profit. He will suffer without resentment any imputation cast
+   upon the honour of himself or his loved ones that does not bear
+   with it the consequence of pecuniary loss. In his charity, he
+   gives with a liberal hand; but it must be heralded with the
+   trumpet and chronicled in brass.
+
+
+"Do you think that picture is fairer than the one you saw of Colonel
+Calhoun last night?"
+
+"The description," said the major frowning, "is--not without grounds.
+Some exag--latitude must be allowed in public speaking."
+
+"And in public acting," replied Hargraves.
+
+"That is not the point," persisted the major, unrelenting. "It was a
+personal caricature. I positively decline to overlook it, sir."
+
+"Major Talbot," said Hargraves, with a winning smile, "I wish you
+would understand me. I want you to know that I never dreamed of
+insulting you. In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I
+want, and what I can, and return it over the footlights. Now, if you
+will, let's let it go at that. I came in to see you about something
+else. We've been pretty good friends for some months, and I'm going
+to take the risk of offending you again. I know you are hard up for
+money--never mind how I found out; a boarding house is no place to
+keep such matters secret--and I want you to let me help you out of the
+pinch. I've been there often enough myself. I've been getting a fair
+salary all the season, and I've saved some money. You're welcome to a
+couple hundred--or even more--until you get--"
+
+"Stop!" commanded the major, with his arm outstretched. "It seems that
+my book didn't lie, after all. You think your money salve will heal
+all the hurts of honour. Under no circumstances would I accept a loan
+from a casual acquaintance; and as to you, sir, I would starve before
+I would consider your insulting offer of a financial adjustment of the
+circumstances we have discussed. I beg to repeat my request relative
+to your quitting the apartment."
+
+Hargraves took his departure without another word. He also left the
+house the same day, moving, as Mrs. Vardeman explained at the supper
+table, nearer the vicinity of the down-town theatre, where "A Magnolia
+Flower" was booked for a week's run.
+
+Critical was the situation with Major Talbot and Miss Lydia. There was
+no one in Washington to whom the major's scruples allowed him to apply
+for a loan. Miss Lydia wrote a letter to Uncle Ralph, but it was
+doubtful whether that relative's constricted affairs would permit him
+to furnish help. The major was forced to make an apologetic address to
+Mrs. Vardeman regarding the delayed payment for board, referring to
+"delinquent rentals" and "delayed remittances" in a rather confused
+strain.
+
+Deliverance came from an entirely unexpected source.
+
+Late one afternoon the door maid came up and announced an old <DW52>
+man who wanted to see Major Talbot. The major asked that he be sent
+up to his study. Soon an old darkey appeared in the doorway, with his
+hat in hand, bowing, and scraping with one clumsy foot. He was quite
+decently dressed in a baggy suit of black. His big, coarse shoes shone
+with a metallic lustre suggestive of stove polish. His bushy wool was
+gray--almost white. After middle life, it is difficult to estimate the
+age of a <DW64>. This one might have seen as many years as had Major
+Talbot.
+
+"I be bound you don't know me, Mars' Pendleton," were his first words.
+
+The major rose and came forward at the old, familiar style of address.
+It was one of the old plantation darkeys without a doubt; but they had
+been widely scattered, and he could not recall the voice or face.
+
+"I don't believe I do," he said kindly--"unless you will assist my
+memory."
+
+"Don't you 'member Cindy's Mose, Mars' Pendleton, what 'migrated
+'mediately after de war?"
+
+"Wait a moment," said the major, rubbing his forehead with the tips
+of his fingers. He loved to recall everything connected with those
+beloved days. "Cindy's Mose," he reflected. "You worked among the
+horses--breaking the colts. Yes, I remember now. After the surrender,
+you took the name of--don't prompt me--Mitchell, and went to the
+West--to Nebraska."
+
+"Yassir, yassir,"--the old man's face stretched with a delighted
+grin--"dat's him, dat's it. Newbraska. Dat's me--Mose Mitchell. Old
+Uncle Mose Mitchell, dey calls me now. Old mars', your pa, gimme a pah
+of dem mule colts when I lef' fur to staht me goin' with. You 'member
+dem colts, Mars' Pendleton?"
+
+"I don't seem to recall the colts," said the major. "You know I was
+married the first year of the war and living at the old Follinsbee
+place. But sit down, sit down, Uncle Mose. I'm glad to see you. I hope
+you have prospered."
+
+Uncle Mose took a chair and laid his hat carefully on the floor beside
+it.
+
+"Yassir; of late I done mouty famous. When I first got to Newbraska,
+dey folks come all roun' me to see dem mule colts. Dey ain't see
+no mules like dem in Newbraska. I sold dem mules for three hundred
+dollars. Yassir--three hundred.
+
+"Den I open a blacksmith shop, suh, and made some money and bought
+some lan'. Me and my old 'oman done raised up seb'm chillun, and
+all doin' well 'cept two of 'em what died. Fo' year ago a railroad
+come along and staht a town slam ag'inst my lan', and, suh, Mars'
+Pendleton, Uncle Mose am worth leb'm thousand dollars in money,
+property, and lan'."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said the major heartily. "Glad to hear it."
+
+"And dat little baby of yo'n, Mars' Pendleton--one what you name Miss
+Lyddy--I be bound dat little tad done growed up tell nobody wouldn't
+know her."
+
+The major stepped to the door and called: "Lydia, dear, will you
+come?"
+
+Miss Lydia, looking quite grown up and a little worried, came in from
+her room.
+
+"Dar, now! What'd I tell you? I knowed dat baby done be plum growed
+up. You don't 'member Uncle Mose, child?"
+
+"This is Aunt Cindy's Mose, Lydia," explained the major. "He left
+Sunnymead for the West when you were two years old."
+
+"Well," said Miss Lydia, "I can hardly be expected to remember you,
+Uncle Mose, at that age. And, as you say, I'm 'plum growed up,' and
+was a blessed long time ago. But I'm glad to see you, even if I can't
+remember you."
+
+And she was. And so was the major. Something alive and tangible had
+come to link them with the happy past. The three sat and talked over
+the olden times, the major and Uncle Mose correcting or prompting each
+other as they reviewed the plantation scenes and days.
+
+The major inquired what the old man was doing so far from his home.
+
+"Uncle Mose am a delicate," he explained, "to de grand Baptis'
+convention in dis city. I never preached none, but bein' a residin'
+elder in de church, and able fur to pay my own expenses, dey sent me
+along."
+
+"And how did you know we were in Washington?" inquired Miss Lydia.
+
+"Dey's a cullud man works in de hotel whar I stops, what comes from
+Mobile. He told me he seen Mars' Pendleton comin' outen dish here
+house one mawnin'.
+
+"What I come fur," continued Uncle Mose, reaching into his
+pocket--"besides de sight of home folks--was to pay Mars' Pendleton
+what I owes him."
+
+"Owe me?" said the major, in surprise.
+
+"Yassir--three hundred dollars." He handed the major a roll of bills.
+"When I lef' old mars' says: 'Take dem mule colts, Mose, and, if it be
+so you gits able, pay fur 'em'. Yassir--dem was his words. De war had
+done lef' old mars' po' hisself. Old mars' bein' 'long ago dead, de
+debt descends to Mars' Pendleton. Three hundred dollars. Uncle Mose is
+plenty able to pay now. When dat railroad buy my lan' I laid off to
+pay fur dem mules. Count de money, Mars' Pendleton. Dat's what I sold
+dem mules fur. Yassir."
+
+Tears were in Major Talbot's eyes. He took Uncle Mose's hand and laid
+his other upon his shoulder.
+
+"Dear, faithful, old servitor," he said in an unsteady voice, "I don't
+mind saying to you that 'Mars' Pendleton' spent his last dollar in the
+world a week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a
+way, it is a sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and
+devotion of the old regime. Lydia, my dear, take the money. You are
+better fitted than I to manage its expenditure."
+
+"Take it, honey," said Uncle Mose. "Hit belongs to you. Hit's Talbot
+money."
+
+After Uncle Mose had gone, Miss Lydia had a good cry--for joy; and the
+major turned his face to a corner, and smoked his clay pipe
+volcanically.
+
+The succeeding days saw the Talbots restored to peace and ease. Miss
+Lydia's face lost its worried look. The major appeared in a new frock
+coat, in which he looked like a wax figure personifying the memory
+of his golden age. Another publisher who read the manuscript of the
+"Anecdotes and Reminiscences" thought that, with a little retouching
+and toning down of the high lights, he could make a really bright
+and salable volume of it. Altogether, the situation was comfortable,
+and not without the touch of hope that is often sweeter than arrived
+blessings.
+
+One day, about a week after their piece of good luck, a maid brought
+a letter for Miss Lydia to her room. The postmark showed that it
+was from New York. Not knowing any one there, Miss Lydia, in a mild
+flutter of wonder, sat down by her table and opened the letter with
+her scissors. This was what she read:
+
+
+   DEAR MISS TALBOT:
+
+   I thought you might be glad to learn of my good fortune. I
+   have received and accepted an offer of two hundred dollars
+   per week by a New York stock company to play Colonel Calhoun
+   in "A Magnolia Flower."
+
+   There is something else I wanted you to know. I guess you'd
+   better not tell Major Talbot. I was anxious to make him some
+   amends for the great help he was to me in studying the part,
+   and for the bad humour he was in about it. He refused to let
+   me, so I did it anyhow. I could easily spare the three
+   hundred.
+
+   Sincerely yours,
+
+   H. HOPKINS HARGRAVES,
+
+   P.S. How did I play Uncle Mose?
+
+
+Major Talbot, passing through the hall, saw Miss Lydia's door open
+and stopped.
+
+"Any mail for us this morning, Lydia, dear?" he asked.
+
+Miss Lydia slid the letter beneath a fold of her dress.
+
+"The _Mobile Chronicle_ came," she said promptly. "It's on the table
+in your study."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE
+
+
+So I went to a doctor.
+
+"How long has it been since you took any alcohol into your system?" he
+asked.
+
+Turning my head sidewise, I answered, "Oh, quite awhile."
+
+He was a young doctor, somewhere between twenty and forty. He wore
+heliotrope socks, but he looked like Napoleon. I liked him immensely.
+
+"Now," said he, "I am going to show you the effect of alcohol upon
+your circulation." I think it was "circulation" he said; though it may
+have been "advertising."
+
+He bared my left arm to the elbow, brought out a bottle of whiskey,
+and gave me a drink. He began to look more like Napoleon. I began to
+like him better.
+
+Then he put a tight compress on my upper arm, stopped my pulse with
+his fingers, and squeezed a rubber bulb connected with an apparatus on
+a stand that looked like a thermometer. The mercury jumped up and down
+without seeming to stop anywhere; but the doctor said it registered
+two hundred and thirty-seven or one hundred and sixty-five or some
+such number.
+
+"Now," said he, "you see what alcohol does to the blood-pressure."
+
+"It's marvellous," said I, "but do you think it a sufficient test?
+Have one on me, and let's try the other arm." But, no!
+
+Then he grasped my hand. I thought I was doomed and he was saying
+good-bye. But all he wanted to do was to jab a needle into the end of
+a finger and compare the red drop with a lot of fifty-cent poker chips
+that he had fastened to a card.
+
+"It's the haemoglobin test," he explained. "The colour of your blood
+is wrong."
+
+"Well," said I, "I know it should be blue; but this is a country of
+mix-ups. Some of my ancestors were cavaliers; but they got thick with
+some people on Nantucket Island, so--"
+
+"I mean," said the doctor, "that the shade of red is too light."
+
+"Oh," said I, "it's a case of matching instead of matches."
+
+The doctor then pounded me severely in the region of the chest. When
+he did that I don't know whether he reminded me most of Napoleon or
+Battling or Lord Nelson. Then he looked grave and mentioned a string
+of grievances that the flesh is heir to--mostly ending in "itis." I
+immediately paid him fifteen dollars on account.
+
+"Is or are it or some or any of them necessarily fatal?" I asked.
+I thought my connection with the matter justified my manifesting a
+certain amount of interest.
+
+"All of them," he answered cheerfully. "But their progress may be
+arrested. With care and proper continuous treatment you may live to be
+eighty-five or ninety."
+
+I began to think of the doctor's bill. "Eighty-five would be
+sufficient, I am sure," was my comment. I paid him ten dollars more on
+account.
+
+"The first thing to do," he said, with renewed animation, "is to find
+a sanitarium where you will get a complete rest for a while, and allow
+your nerves to get into a better condition. I myself will go with you
+and select a suitable one."
+
+So he took me to a mad-house in the Catskills. It was on a bare
+mountain frequented only by infrequent frequenters. You could see
+nothing but stones and boulders, some patches of snow, and scattered
+pine trees. The young physician in charge was most agreeable. He gave
+me a stimulant without applying a compress to the arm. It was luncheon
+time, and we were invited to partake. There were about twenty inmates
+at little tables in the dining room. The young physician in charge
+came to our table and said: "It is a custom with our guests not
+to regard themselves as patients, but merely as tired ladies and
+gentlemen taking a rest. Whatever slight maladies they may have are
+never alluded to in conversation."
+
+My doctor called loudly to a waitress to bring some phosphoglycerate
+of lime hash, dog-bread, bromo-seltzer pancakes, and nux vomica tea
+for my repast. Then a sound arose like a sudden wind storm among pine
+trees. It was produced by every guest in the room whispering loudly,
+"Neurasthenia!"--except one man with a nose, whom I distinctly heard
+say, "Chronic alcoholism." I hope to meet him again. The physician in
+charge turned and walked away.
+
+An hour or so after luncheon he conducted us to the workshop--say
+fifty yards from the house. Thither the guests had been conducted by
+the physician in charge's understudy and sponge-holder--a man with
+feet and a blue sweater. He was so tall that I was not sure he had a
+face; but the Armour Packing Company would have been delighted with
+his hands.
+
+"Here," said the physician in charge, "our guests find relaxation
+from past mental worries by devoting themselves to physical
+labour--recreation, in reality."
+
+There were turning-lathes, carpenters' outfits, clay-modelling
+tools, spinning-wheels, weaving-frames, treadmills, bass drums,
+enlarged-crayon-portrait apparatuses, blacksmith forges, and
+everything, seemingly, that could interest the paying lunatic guests
+of a first-rate sanitarium.
+
+"The lady making mud pies in the corner," whispered the physician in
+charge, "is no other than--Lula Lulington, the authoress of the novel
+entitled 'Why Love Loves.' What she is doing now is simply to rest her
+mind after performing that piece of work."
+
+I had seen the book. "Why doesn't she do it by writing another one
+instead?" I asked.
+
+As you see, I wasn't as far gone as they thought I was.
+
+"The gentleman pouring water through the funnel," continued the
+physician in charge, "is a Wall Street broker broken down from
+overwork."
+
+I buttoned my coat.
+
+Others he pointed out were architects playing with Noah's arks,
+ministers reading Darwin's "Theory of Evolution," lawyers sawing
+wood, tired-out society ladies talking Ibsen to the blue-sweatered
+sponge-holder, a neurotic millionaire lying asleep on the floor, and
+a prominent artist drawing a little red wagon around the room.
+
+"You look pretty strong," said the physician in charge to me. "I think
+the best mental relaxation for you would be throwing small boulders
+over the mountainside and then bringing them up again."
+
+I was a hundred yards away before my doctor overtook me.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked.
+
+"The matter is," said I, "that there are no aeroplanes handy. So I am
+going to merrily and hastily jog the foot-pathway to yon station and
+catch the first unlimited-soft-coal express back to town."
+
+"Well," said the doctor, "perhaps you are right. This seems hardly the
+suitable place for you. But what you need is rest--absolute rest and
+exercise."
+
+That night I went to a hotel in the city, and said to the clerk: "What
+I need is absolute rest and exercise. Can you give me a room with one
+of those tall folding beds in it, and a relay of bellboys to work it
+up and down while I rest?"
+
+The clerk rubbed a speck off one of his finger nails and glanced
+sidewise at a tall man in a white hat sitting in the lobby. That man
+came over and asked me politely if I had seen the shrubbery at the
+west entrance. I had not, so he showed it to me and then looked me
+over.
+
+"I thought you had 'em," he said, not unkindly, "but I guess you're
+all right. You'd better go see a doctor, old man."
+
+A week afterward my doctor tested my blood pressure again without the
+preliminary stimulant. He looked to me a little less like Napoleon.
+And his socks were of a shade of tan that did not appeal to me.
+
+"What you need," he decided, "is sea air and companionship."
+
+"Would a mermaid--" I began; but he slipped on his professional
+manner.
+
+"I myself," he said, "will take you to the Hotel Bonair off the coast
+of Long Island and see that you get in good shape. It is a quiet,
+comfortable resort where you will soon recuperate."
+
+The Hotel Bonair proved to be a nine-hundred-room fashionable hostelry
+on an island off the main shore. Everybody who did not dress for
+dinner was shoved into a side dining-room and given only a terrapin
+and champagne table d'hote. The bay was a great stamping ground for
+wealthy yachtsmen. The _Corsair_ anchored there the day we arrived.
+I saw Mr. Morgan standing on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing
+longingly at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody
+could afford to pay their prices. When you went away you simply left
+your baggage, stole a skiff, and beat it for the mainland in the
+night.
+
+When I had been there one day I got a pad of monogrammed telegraph
+blanks at the clerk's desk and began to wire to all my friends for
+get-away money. My doctor and I played one game of croquet on the golf
+links and went to sleep on the lawn.
+
+When we got back to town a thought seemed to occur to him suddenly.
+"By the way," he asked, "how do you feel?"
+
+"Relieved of very much," I replied.
+
+Now a consulting physician is different. He isn't exactly sure whether
+he is to be paid or not, and this uncertainty insures you either the
+most careful or the most careless attention. My doctor took me to
+see a consulting physician. He made a poor guess and gave me careful
+attention. I liked him immensely. He put me through some coordination
+exercises.
+
+"Have you a pain in the back of your head?" he asked. I told him I had
+not.
+
+"Shut your eyes," he ordered, "put your feet close together, and jump
+backward as far as you can."
+
+I always was a good backward jumper with my eyes shut, so I obeyed.
+My head struck the edge of the bathroom door, which had been left
+open and was only three feet away. The doctor was very sorry. He had
+overlooked the fact that the door was open. He closed it.
+
+"Now touch your nose with your right forefinger," he said.
+
+"Where is it?" I asked.
+
+"On your face," said he.
+
+"I mean my right forefinger," I explained.
+
+"Oh, excuse me," said he. He reopened the bathroom door, and I took my
+finger out of the crack of it. After I had performed the marvellous
+digito-nasal feat I said:
+
+"I do not wish to deceive you as to symptoms, Doctor; I
+really have something like a pain in the back of my head." He
+ignored the symptom and examined my heart carefully with a
+latest-popular-air-penny-in-the-slot ear-trumpet. I felt like a
+ballad.
+
+"Now," he said, "gallop like a horse for about five minutes around the
+room."
+
+I gave the best imitation I could of a disqualified Percheron being
+led out of Madison Square Garden. Then, without dropping in a penny,
+he listened to my chest again.
+
+"No glanders in our family, Doc," I said.
+
+The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of
+my nose. "Look at my finger," he commanded.
+
+"Did you ever try Pears'--" I began; but he went on with his test
+rapidly.
+
+"Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger.
+At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the
+bay." This for about three minutes.
+
+He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It
+seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. I'll
+bet that if he had used the phrases: "Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied,
+outward--or rather laterally--in the direction of the horizon,
+underlaid, so to speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet," and "Now,
+returning--or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow
+it upon my upraised digit"--I'll bet, I say, that Henry James himself
+could have passed the examination.
+
+After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the
+spine or a cousin with swelled ankles, the two doctors retired to the
+bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I
+ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across the bay.
+
+The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and
+Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I
+was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to
+eat on it, except snails. And I never eat a snail unless it overtakes
+me and bites me first.
+
+"You must follow this diet strictly," said the doctors.
+
+"I'd follow it a mile if I could get one-tenth of what's on it," I
+answered.
+
+"Of next importance," they went on, "is outdoor air and exercise. And
+here is a prescription that will be of great benefit to you."
+
+Then all of us took something. They took their hats, and I took my
+departure.
+
+I went to a druggist and showed him the prescription.
+
+"It will be $2.87 for an ounce bottle," he said.
+
+"Will you give me a piece of your wrapping cord?" said I.
+
+I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it
+around my neck, and tucked it inside. All of us have a little
+superstition, and mine runs to a confidence in amulets.
+
+Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill.
+I couldn't work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The only way I could get any
+sympathy was to go without shaving for four days. Even then somebody
+would say: "Old man, you look as hardy as a pine knot. Been up for a
+jaunt in the Maine woods, eh?"
+
+Then, suddenly, I remembered that I must have outdoor air and
+exercise. So I went down South to John's. John is an approximate
+relative by verdict of a preacher standing with a little book in his
+hands in a bower of chrysanthemums while a hundred thousand people
+looked on. John has a country house seven miles from Pineville. It
+is at an altitude and on the Blue Ridge Mountains in a state too
+dignified to be dragged into this controversy. John is mica, which is
+more valuable and clearer than gold.
+
+He met me at Pineville, and we took the trolley car to his home. It
+is a big, neighbourless cottage on a hill surrounded by a hundred
+mountains. We got off at his little private station, where John's
+family and Amaryllis met and greeted us. Amaryllis looked at me a
+trifle anxiously.
+
+A rabbit came bounding across the hill between us and the house.
+I threw down my suit-case and pursued it hotfoot. After I had run
+twenty yards and seen it disappear, I sat down on the grass and wept
+disconsolately.
+
+"I can't catch a rabbit any more," I sobbed. "I'm of no further use in
+the world. I may as well be dead."
+
+"Oh, what is it--what is it, Brother John?" I heard Amaryllis say.
+
+"Nerves a little unstrung," said John, in his calm way. "Don't worry.
+Get up, you rabbit-chaser, and come on to the house before the
+biscuits get cold." It was about twilight, and the mountains came up
+nobly to Miss Murfree's descriptions of them.
+
+Soon after dinner I announced that I believed I could sleep for a year
+or two, including legal holidays. So I was shown to a room as big and
+cool as a flower garden, where there was a bed as broad as a lawn.
+Soon afterward the remainder of the household retired, and then there
+fell upon the land a silence.
+
+I had not heard a silence before in years. It was absolute. I raised
+myself on my elbow and listened to it. Sleep! I thought that if I only
+could hear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could
+compose myself to rest. I thought once that I heard a sound like
+the sail of a catboat flapping as it veered about in a breeze, but
+I decided that it was probably only a tack in the carpet. Still I
+listened.
+
+Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the window-sill, and,
+in what he no doubt considered sleepy tones, enunciated the noise
+generally translated as "cheep!"
+
+I leaped into the air.
+
+"Hey! what's the matter down there?" called John from his room above
+mine.
+
+"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that I accidentally bumped my head
+against the ceiling."
+
+The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the mountains.
+There were forty-seven of them in sight. I shuddered, went into the
+big hall sitting room of the house, selected "Pancoast's Family
+Practice of Medicine" from a bookcase, and began to read. John came
+in, took the book away from me, and led me outside. He has a farm of
+three hundred acres furnished with the usual complement of barns,
+mules, peasantry, and harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had
+seen such things in my childhood, and my heart began to sink.
+
+Then John spoke of alfalfa, and I brightened at once. "Oh, yes," said
+I, "wasn't she in the chorus of--let's see--"
+
+"Green, you know," said John, "and tender, and you plow it under after
+the first season."
+
+"I know," said I, "and the grass grows over her."
+
+"Right," said John. "You know something about farming, after all."
+
+"I know something of some farmers," said I, "and a sure scythe will
+mow them down some day."
+
+On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable creature
+walked across our path. I stopped irresistibly fascinated, gazing
+at it. John waited patiently, smoking his cigarette. He is a modern
+farmer. After ten minutes he said: "Are you going to stand there
+looking at that chicken all day? Breakfast is nearly ready."
+
+"A chicken?" said I.
+
+"A White Orpington hen, if you want to particularize."
+
+"A White Orpington hen?" I repeated, with intense interest. The fowl
+walked slowly away with graceful dignity, and I followed like a child
+after the Pied Piper. Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and
+then he took me by the sleeve and conducted me to breakfast.
+
+After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed. I was sleeping
+and eating well and actually beginning to enjoy life. For a man in
+my desperate condition that would never do. So I sneaked down to the
+trolley-car station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one
+of the best physicians in town. By this time I knew exactly what to do
+when I needed medical treatment. I hung my hat on the back of a chair,
+and said rapidly:
+
+"Doctor, I have cirrhosis of the heart, indurated arteries,
+neurasthenia, neuritis, acute indigestion, and convalescence. I am
+going to live on a strict diet. I shall also take a tepid bath at
+night and a cold one in the morning. I shall endeavour to be cheerful,
+and fix my mind on pleasant subjects. In the way of drugs I intend to
+take a phosphorous pill three times a day, preferably after meals, and
+a tonic composed of the tinctures of gentian, cinchona, calisaya, and
+cardamon compound. Into each teaspoonful of this I shall mix tincture
+of nux vomica, beginning with one drop and increasing it a drop each
+day until the maximum dose is reached. I shall drop this with a
+medicine-dropper, which can be procured at a trifling cost at any
+pharmacy. Good morning."
+
+I took my hat and walked out. After I had closed the door I remembered
+something that I had forgotten to say. I opened it again. The doctor
+had not moved from where he had been sitting, but he gave a slightly
+nervous start when he saw me again.
+
+"I forgot to mention," said I, "that I shall also take absolute rest
+and exercise."
+
+After this consultation I felt much better. The reestablishing
+in my mind of the fact that I was hopelessly ill gave me so much
+satisfaction that I almost became gloomy again. There is nothing more
+alarming to a neurasthenic than to feel himself growing well and
+cheerful.
+
+John looked after me carefully. After I had evinced so much interest
+in his White Orpington chicken he tried his best to divert my mind,
+and was particular to lock his hen house of nights. Gradually the
+tonic mountain air, the wholesome food, and the daily walks among
+the hills so alleviated my malady that I became utterly wretched and
+despondent. I heard of a country doctor who lived in the mountains
+nearby. I went to see him and told him the whole story. He was a
+gray-bearded man with clear, blue, wrinkled eyes, in a home-made suit
+of gray jeans.
+
+In order to save time I diagnosed my case, touched my nose with my
+right forefinger, struck myself below the knee to make my foot kick,
+sounded my chest, stuck out my tongue, and asked him the price of
+cemetery lots in Pineville.
+
+He lit his pipe and looked at me for about three minutes. "Brother,"
+he said, after a while, "you are in a mighty bad way. There's a chance
+for you to pull through, but it's a mighty slim one."
+
+"What can it be?" I asked eagerly. "I have taken arsenic and gold,
+phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica, hydrotherapeutic baths, rest,
+excitement, codein, and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Is there anything
+left in the pharmacopoeia?"
+
+"Somewhere in these mountains," said the doctor, "there's a plant
+growing--a flowering plant that'll cure you, and it's about the only
+thing that will. It's of a kind that's as old as the world; but of
+late it's powerful scarce and hard to find. You and I will have to
+hunt it up. I'm not engaged in active practice now: I'm getting along
+in years; but I'll take your case. You'll have to come every day in
+the afternoon and help me hunt for this plant till we find it. The
+city doctors may know a lot about new scientific things, but they
+don't know much about the cures that nature carries around in her
+saddlebags."
+
+So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cure-all plant among the
+mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge. Together we toiled up steep
+heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch
+every sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We
+waded through gorges and chasms, breast-deep with laurel and ferns;
+we followed the banks of mountain streams for miles; we wound our way
+like Indians through brakes of pine--road side, hill side, river side,
+mountain side we explored in our search for the miraculous plant.
+
+As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find.
+But we followed our quest. Day by day we plumbed the valleys, scaled
+the heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous
+plant. Mountain-bred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home
+too fatigued to do anything except fall into bed and sleep until
+morning. This we kept up for a month.
+
+One evening after I had returned from a six-mile tramp with the old
+doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk under the trees near the
+road. We looked at the mountains drawing their royal-purple robes
+around them for their night's repose.
+
+"I'm glad you're well again," she said. "When you first came you
+frightened me. I thought you were really ill."
+
+"Well again!" I almost shrieked. "Do you know that I have only one
+chance in a thousand to live?"
+
+Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. "Why," said she, "you are as
+strong as one of the plough-mules, you sleep ten or twelve hours every
+night, and you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you
+want?"
+
+"I tell you," said I, "that unless we find the magic--that is, the
+plant we are looking for--in time, nothing can save me. The doctor
+tells me so."
+
+"What doctor?"
+
+"Doctor Tatum--the old doctor who lives halfway up Black Oak Mountain.
+Do you know him?"
+
+"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go
+every day--is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that
+have brought back your health and strength? God bless the old doctor."
+
+Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his
+rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would
+be on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and
+called to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes
+while I waited. Then the old doctor drove on.
+
+When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged out an encyclopaedia and
+sought a word in it. "The doctor said," she told me, "that you needn't
+call any more as a patient, but he'd be glad to see you any time as
+a friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopaedia
+and tell you what it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of
+flowering plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus
+and Virgil. What do you suppose the doctor meant by that?"
+
+"I know what he meant," said I. "I know now."
+
+A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet
+Lady Neurasthenia.
+
+The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians
+of the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific
+medicament.
+
+And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black
+Oak Mountain--take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting
+house in the pine-grove.
+
+Absolute rest and exercise!
+
+What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade,
+and, with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the
+gold-bannered blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of
+the night?
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+OCTOBER AND JUNE
+
+
+The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In
+the closet near by was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by
+weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old
+days of war's alarms!
+
+And now, veteran that he was of his country's strenuous times, he had
+been reduced to abject surrender by a woman's soft eyes and smiling
+lips. As he sat in his quiet room he held in his hand the letter he
+had just received from her--the letter that had caused him to wear
+that look of gloom. He re-read the fatal paragraph that had destroyed
+his hope.
+
+
+   In declining the honour you have done me in asking me to be
+   your wife, I feel that I ought to speak frankly. The reason
+   I have for so doing is the great difference between our ages.
+   I like you very, very much, but I am sure that our marriage
+   would not be a happy one. I am sorry to have to refer to this,
+   but I believe that you will appreciate my honesty in giving
+   you the true reason.
+
+
+The Captain sighed, and leaned his head upon his hand. Yes, there were
+many years between their ages. But he was strong and rugged, he had
+position and wealth. Would not his love, his tender care, and the
+advantages he could bestow upon her make her forget the question of
+age? Besides, he was almost sure that she cared for him.
+
+The Captain was a man of prompt action. In the field he had been
+distinguished for his decisiveness and energy. He would see her and
+plead his cause again in person. Age!--what was it to come between him
+and the one he loved?
+
+In two hours he stood ready, in light marching order, for his greatest
+battle. He took the train for the old Southern town in Tennessee where
+she lived.
+
+Theodora Deming was on the steps of the handsome, porticoed old
+mansion, enjoying the summer twilight, when the Captain entered the
+gate and came up the gravelled walk. She met him with a smile that was
+free from embarrassment. As the Captain stood on the step below her,
+the difference in their ages did not appear so great. He was tall and
+straight and clear-eyed and browned. She was in the bloom of lovely
+womanhood.
+
+"I wasn't expecting you," said Theodora; "but now that you've come you
+may sit on the step. Didn't you get my letter?"
+
+"I did," said the Captain; "and that's why I came. I say, now, Theo,
+reconsider your answer, won't you?"
+
+Theodora smiled softly upon him. He carried his years well.
+She was really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his
+manliness--perhaps, if--
+
+"No, no," she said, shaking her head, positively; "it's out of the
+question. I like you a whole lot, but marrying won't do. My age and
+yours are--but don't make me say it again--I told you in my letter."
+
+The Captain flushed a little through the bronze on his face. He was
+silent for a while, gazing sadly into the twilight. Beyond a line of
+woods that he could see was a field where the boys in blue had once
+bivouacked on their march toward the sea. How long ago it seemed now!
+Truly, Fate and Father Time had tricked him sorely. Just a few years
+interposed between himself and happiness!
+
+Theodora's hand crept down and rested in the clasp of his firm, brown
+one. She felt, at least, that sentiment that is akin to love.
+
+"Don't take it so hard, please," she said, gently. "It's all for the
+best. I've reasoned it out very wisely all by myself. Some day you'll
+be glad I didn't marry you. It would be very nice and lovely for a
+while--but, just think! In only a few short years what different
+tastes we would have! One of us would want to sit by the fireside and
+read, and maybe nurse neuralgia or rheumatism of evenings, while the
+other would be crazy for balls and theatres and late suppers. No, my
+dear friend. While it isn't exactly January and May, it's a clear case
+of October and pretty early in June."
+
+"I'd always do what you wanted me to do, Theo. If you wanted to--"
+
+"No, you wouldn't. You think now that you would, but you wouldn't.
+Please don't ask me any more."
+
+The Captain had lost his battle. But he was a gallant warrior, and
+when he rose to make his final adieu his mouth was grimly set and his
+shoulders were squared.
+
+He took the train for the North that night. On the next evening he was
+back in his room, where his sword was hanging against the wall. He was
+dressing for dinner, tying his white tie into a very careful bow. And
+at the same time he was indulging in a pensive soliloquy.
+
+"'Pon my honour, I believe Theo was right, after all. Nobody can deny
+that she's a peach, but she must be twenty-eight, at the very kindest
+calculation."
+
+For you see, the Captain was only nineteen, and his sword had never
+been drawn except on the parade ground at Chattanooga, which was as
+near as he ever got to the Spanish-American War.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL
+
+
+Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer
+resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains
+on a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is
+a contented village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn,
+narrow-gauge railroad line. You wonder whether the railroad lost
+itself in the pine woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and
+loneliness, or whether Lakelands got lost and huddled itself along
+the railroad to wait for the cars to carry it home.
+
+You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes, and
+the lands about are too poor to be worth mentioning.
+
+Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy
+old mansion run by Josiah Rankin for the accommodation of visitors
+who desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House
+is delightfully mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern
+improvements, and it is altogether as comfortably neglected and
+pleasingly disarranged as your own home. But you are furnished with
+clean rooms and good and abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods
+must do the rest. Nature has provided a mineral spring, grape-vine
+swings, and croquet--even the wickets are wooden. You have Art to
+thank only for the fiddle-and-guitar music twice a week at the hop in
+the rustic pavilion.
+
+The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a
+necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are busy people, who may be
+likened to clocks that need a fortnight's winding to insure a year's
+running of their wheels. You will find students there from the lower
+towns, now and then an artist, or a geologist absorbed in construing
+the ancient strata of the hills. A few quiet families spend the
+summers there; and often one or two tired members of that patient
+sisterhood known to Lakelands as "schoolmarms."
+
+A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been
+described to its guests as "an object of interest" in the catalogue,
+had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that
+was no longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was "the only
+church in the United States, sah, with an overshot-wheel; and the only
+mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ." The guests of
+the Eagle House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard
+the preacher liken the purified Christian to bolted flour ground to
+usefulness between the millstones of experience and suffering.
+
+Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House
+one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honoured and beloved
+guest. In Lakelands he was called "Father Abram," because his hair was
+so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry,
+and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even
+new guests after three or four days' acquaintance gave him this
+familiar title.
+
+Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring
+town in the Northwest where he owned mills, not little mills with pews
+and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the
+freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an ant-heap.
+And now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a
+church, for their stories run together.
+
+In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller.
+There was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land
+than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill.
+His hand was heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers
+brought their grain to him across many weary miles of rocky roads.
+
+The delight of the miller's life was his little daughter, Aglaia.
+That was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but
+the mountaineers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had
+encountered it somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her
+babyhood Aglaia herself repudiated the name, as far as common use
+went, and persisted in calling herself "Dums." The miller and his wife
+often tried to coax from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name,
+but without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little
+garden behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the
+child took a peculiar delight and interest. It may have been that she
+perceived in "Dums" a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite
+flowers.
+
+When Aglaia was four years old she and her father used to go through
+a little performance in the mill every afternoon, that never failed
+to come off, the weather permitting. When supper was ready her mother
+would brush her hair and put on a clean apron and send her across to
+the mill to bring her father home. When the miller saw her coming in
+the mill door he would come forward, all white with the flour dust,
+and wave his hand and sing an old miller's song that was familiar in
+those parts and ran something like this:
+
+
+   "The wheel goes round,
+    The grist is ground,
+       The dusty miller's merry.
+    He sings all day,
+    His work is play,
+       While thinking of his dearie."
+
+
+Then Aglaia would run to him laughing, and call:
+
+"Da-da, come take Dums home;" and the miller would swing her to his
+shoulder and march over to supper, singing the miller's song. Every
+evening this would take place.
+
+One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared.
+When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road
+in front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to
+see that she did not stray too far away, and she was already gone.
+
+Of course every effort was made to find her. The neighbours gathered
+and searched the woods and the mountains for miles around. They
+dragged every foot of the mill race and the creek for a long distance
+below the dam. Never a trace of her did they find. A night or two
+before there had been a family of wanderers camped in a grove near by.
+It was conjectured that they might have stolen the child; but when
+their wagon was overtaken and searched she could not be found.
+
+The miller remained at the mill for nearly two years; and then his
+hope of finding her died out. He and his wife moved to the Northwest.
+In a few years he was the owner of a modern mill in one of the
+important milling cities in that region. Mrs. Strong never recovered
+from the shock caused by the loss of Aglaia, and two years after they
+moved away the miller was left to bear his sorrow alone.
+
+When Abram Strong became prosperous he paid a visit to Lakelands and
+the old mill. The scene was a sad one for him, but he was a strong
+man, and always appeared cheery and kindly. It was then that he was
+inspired to convert the old mill into a church. Lakelands was too
+poor to build one; and the still poorer mountaineers could not assist.
+There was no place of worship nearer than twenty miles.
+
+The miller altered the appearance of the mill as little as possible.
+The big overshot-wheel was left in its place. The young people who
+came to the church used to cut their initials in its soft and slowly
+decaying wood. The dam was partly destroyed, and the clear mountain
+stream rippled unchecked down its rocky bed. Inside the mill the
+changes were greater. The shafts and millstones and belts and pulleys
+were, of course, all removed. There were two rows of benches with
+aisles between, and a little raised platform and pulpit at one end.
+On three sides overhead was a gallery containing seats, and reached
+by a stairway inside. There was also an organ--a real pipe organ--in
+the gallery, that was the pride of the congregation of the Old Mill
+Church. Miss Phoebe Summers was the organist. The Lakelands boys
+proudly took turns at pumping it for her at each Sunday's service.
+The Rev. Mr. Banbridge was the preacher, and rode down from Squirrel
+Gap on his old white horse without ever missing a service. And Abram
+Strong paid for everything. He paid the preacher five hundred dollars
+a year; and Miss Phoebe two hundred dollars.
+
+Thus, in memory of Aglaia, the old mill was converted into a blessing
+for the community in which she had once lived. It seemed that the
+brief life of the child had brought about more good than the three
+score years and ten of many. But Abram Strong set up yet another
+monument to her memory.
+
+Out from his mills in the Northwest came the "Aglaia" flour, made from
+the hardest and finest wheat that could be raised. The country soon
+found out that the "Aglaia" flour had two prices. One was the highest
+market price, and the other was--nothing.
+
+Wherever there happened a calamity that left people destitute--a fire,
+a flood, a tornado, a strike, or a famine, there would go hurrying a
+generous consignment of the "Aglaia" at its "nothing" price. It was
+given away cautiously and judiciously, but it was freely given, and
+not a penny could the hungry ones pay for it. There got to be a saying
+that whenever there was a disastrous fire in the poor districts of a
+city the fire chief's buggy reached the scene first, next the "Aglaia"
+flour wagon, and then the fire engines.
+
+So this was Abram Strong's other monument to Aglaia. Perhaps to a poet
+the theme may seem too utilitarian for beauty; but to some the fancy
+will seem sweet and fine that the pure, white, virgin flour, flying on
+its mission of love and charity, might be likened to the spirit of the
+lost child whose memory it signalized.
+
+There came a year that brought hard times to the Cumberlands. Grain
+crops everywhere were light, and there were no local crops at all.
+Mountain floods had done much damage to property. Even game in the
+woods was so scarce that the hunters brought hardly enough home to
+keep their folk alive. Especially about Lakelands was the rigour felt.
+
+As soon as Abram Strong heard of this his messages flew; and the
+little narrow-gauge cars began to unload "Aglaia" flour there. The
+miller's orders were to store the flour in the gallery of the Old Mill
+Church; and that every one who attended the church was to carry home a
+sack of it.
+
+Two weeks after that Abram Strong came for his yearly visit to the
+Eagle House, and became "Father Abram" again.
+
+That season the Eagle House had fewer guests than usual. Among them
+was Rose Chester. Miss Chester came to Lakelands from Atlanta, where
+she worked in a department store. This was the first vacation outing
+of her life. The wife of the store manager had once spent a summer at
+the Eagle House. She had taken a fancy to Rose, and had persuaded her
+to go there for her three weeks' holiday. The manager's wife gave her
+a letter to Mrs. Rankin, who gladly received her in her own charge and
+care.
+
+Miss Chester was not very strong. She was about twenty, and pale and
+delicate from an indoor life. But one week of Lakelands gave her a
+brightness and spirit that changed her wonderfully. The time was early
+September when the Cumberlands are at their greatest beauty. The
+mountain foliage was growing brilliant with autumnal colours; one
+breathed aerial champagne, the nights were deliciously cool, causing
+one to snuggle cosily under the warm blankets of the Eagle House.
+
+Father Abram and Miss Chester became great friends. The old miller
+learned her story from Mrs. Rankin, and his interest went out quickly
+to the slender lonely girl who was making her own way in the world.
+
+The mountain country was new to Miss Chester. She had lived many years
+in the warm, flat town of Atlanta; and the grandeur and variety of the
+Cumberlands delighted her. She was determined to enjoy every moment of
+her stay. Her little hoard of savings had been estimated so carefully
+in connection with her expenses that she knew almost to a penny what
+her very small surplus would be when she returned to work.
+
+Miss Chester was fortunate in gaining Father Abram for a friend and
+companion. He knew every road and peak and <DW72> of the mountains near
+Lakelands. Through him she became acquainted with the solemn delight
+of the shadowy, tilted aisles of the pine forests, the dignity of the
+bare crags, the crystal, tonic mornings, the dreamy, golden afternoons
+full of mysterious sadness. So her health improved, and her spirits
+grew light. She had a laugh as genial and hearty in its feminine
+way as the famous laugh of Father Abram. Both of them were natural
+optimists; and both knew how to present a serene and cheerful face to
+the world.
+
+One day Miss Chester learned from one of the guests the history of
+Father Abram's lost child. Quickly she hurried away and found the
+miller seated on his favourite rustic bench near the chalybeate
+spring. He was surprised when his little friend slipped her hand into
+his, and looked at him with tears in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, Father Abram," she said, "I'm so sorry! I didn't know until
+to-day about your little daughter. You will find her yet some day--
+Oh, I hope you will."
+
+The miller looked down at her with his strong, ready smile.
+
+"Thank you, Miss Rose," he said, in his usual cheery tones. "But I do
+not expect to find Aglaia. For a few years I hoped that she had been
+stolen by vagrants, and that she still lived; but I have lost that
+hope. I believe that she was drowned."
+
+"I can understand," said Miss Chester, "how the doubt must have made
+it so hard to bear. And yet you are so cheerful and so ready to make
+other people's burdens light. Good Father Abram!"
+
+"Good Miss Rose!" mimicked the miller, smiling. "Who thinks of others
+more than you do?"
+
+A whimsical mood seemed to strike Miss Chester.
+
+"Oh, Father Abram," she cried, "wouldn't it be grand if I should prove
+to be your daughter? Wouldn't it be romantic? And wouldn't you like to
+have me for a daughter?"
+
+"Indeed, I would," said the miller, heartily. "If Aglaia had lived I
+could wish for nothing better than for her to have grown up to be just
+such a little woman as you are. Maybe you are Aglaia," he continued,
+falling in with her playful mood; "can't you remember when we lived at
+the mill?"
+
+Miss Chester fell swiftly into serious meditation. Her large eyes were
+fixed vaguely upon something in the distance. Father Abram was amused
+at her quick return to seriousness. She sat thus for a long time
+before she spoke.
+
+"No," she said at length, with a long sigh, "I can't remember anything
+at all about a mill. I don't think that I ever saw a flour mill in my
+life until I saw your funny little church. And if I were your little
+girl I would remember it, wouldn't I? I'm so sorry, Father Abram."
+
+"So am I," said Father Abram, humouring her. "But if you cannot
+remember that you are my little girl, Miss Rose, surely you can
+recollect being some one else's. You remember your own parents, of
+course."
+
+"Oh, yes; I remember them very well--especially my father. He wasn't a
+bit like you, Father Abram. Oh, I was only making believe: Come, now,
+you've rested long enough. You promised to show me the pool where you
+can see the trout playing, this afternoon. I never saw a trout."
+
+Late one afternoon Father Abram set out for the old mill alone. He
+often went to sit and think of the old days when he lived in the
+cottage across the road. Time had smoothed away the sharpness of his
+grief until he no longer found the memory of those times painful. But
+whenever Abram Strong sat in the melancholy September afternoons on
+the spot where "Dums" used to run in every day with her yellow curls
+flying, the smile that Lakelands always saw upon his face was not
+there.
+
+The miller made his way slowly up the winding, steep road. The trees
+crowded so close to the edge of it that he walked in their shade, with
+his hat in his hand. Squirrels ran playfully upon the old rail fence
+at his right. Quails were calling to their young broods in the wheat
+stubble. The low sun sent a torrent of pale gold up the ravine that
+opened to the west. Early September!--it was within a few days only of
+the anniversary of Aglaia's disappearance.
+
+The old overshot-wheel, half covered with mountain ivy, caught patches
+of the warm sunlight filtering through the trees. The cottage across
+the road was still standing, but it would doubtless go down before the
+next winter's mountain blasts. It was overrun with morning glory and
+wild gourd vines, and the door hung by one hinge.
+
+Father Abram pushed open the mill door, and entered softly. And then
+he stood still, wondering. He heard the sound of some one within,
+weeping inconsolably. He looked, and saw Miss Chester sitting in a dim
+pew, with her head bowed upon an open letter that her hands held.
+
+Father Abram went to her, and laid one of his strong hands firmly upon
+hers. She looked up, breathed his name, and tried to speak further.
+
+"Not yet, Miss Rose," said the miller, kindly. "Don't try to talk yet.
+There's nothing as good for you as a nice, quiet little cry when you
+are feeling blue."
+
+It seemed that the old miller, who had known so much sorrow himself,
+was a magician in driving it away from others. Miss Chester's sobs
+grew easier. Presently she took her little plain-bordered handkerchief
+and wiped away a drop or two that had fallen from her eyes upon Father
+Abram's big hand. Then she looked up and smiled through her tears.
+Miss Chester could always smile before her tears had dried, just as
+Father Abram could smile through his own grief. In that way the two
+were very much alike.
+
+The miller asked her no questions; but by and by Miss Chester began to
+tell him.
+
+It was the old story that always seems so big and important to the
+young, and that brings reminiscent smiles to their elders. Love was
+the theme, as may be supposed. There was a young man in Atlanta, full
+of all goodness and the graces, who had discovered that Miss Chester
+also possessed these qualities above all other people in Atlanta or
+anywhere else from Greenland to Patagonia. She showed Father Abram the
+letter over which she had been weeping. It was a manly, tender letter,
+a little superlative and urgent, after the style of love letters
+written by young men full of goodness and the graces. He proposed for
+Miss Chester's hand in marriage at once. Life, he said, since her
+departure for a three-weeks' visit, was not to be endured. He begged
+for an immediate answer; and if it were favourable he promised to fly,
+ignoring the narrow-gauge railroad, at once to Lakelands.
+
+"And now where does the trouble come in?" asked the miller when he had
+read the letter.
+
+"I cannot marry him," said Miss Chester.
+
+"Do you want to marry him?" asked Father Abram.
+
+"Oh, I love him," she answered, "but--" Down went her head and she
+sobbed again.
+
+"Come, Miss Rose," said the miller; "you can give me your confidence.
+I do not question you, but I think you can trust me."
+
+"I do trust you," said the girl. "I will tell you why I must refuse
+Ralph. I am nobody; I haven't even a name; the name I call myself is
+a lie. Ralph is a noble man. I love him with all my heart, but I can
+never be his."
+
+"What talk is this?" said Father Abram. "You said that you remember
+your parents. Why do you say you have no name? I do not understand."
+
+"I do remember them," said Miss Chester. "I remember them too well.
+My first recollections are of our life somewhere in the far South. We
+moved many times to different towns and states. I have picked cotton,
+and worked in factories, and have often gone without enough food and
+clothes. My mother was sometimes good to me; my father was always
+cruel, and beat me. I think they were both idle and unsettled.
+
+"One night when we were living in a little town on a river near
+Atlanta they had a great quarrel. It was while they were abusing and
+taunting each other that I learned--oh, Father Abram, I learned that I
+didn't even have the right to be--don't you understand? I had no right
+even to a name; I was nobody.
+
+"I ran away that night. I walked to Atlanta and found work. I gave
+myself the name of Rose Chester, and have earned my own living ever
+since. Now you know why I cannot marry Ralph--and, oh, I can never
+tell him why."
+
+Better than any sympathy, more helpful than pity, was Father Abram's
+depreciation of her woes.
+
+"Why, dear, dear! is that all?" he said. "Fie, fie! I thought
+something was in the way. If this perfect young man is a man at all he
+will not care a pinch of bran for your family tree. Dear Miss Rose,
+take my word for it, it is yourself he cares for. Tell him frankly,
+just as you have told me, and I'll warrant that he will laugh at your
+story, and think all the more of you for it."
+
+"I shall never tell him," said Miss Chester, sadly. "And I shall never
+marry him nor any one else. I have not the right."
+
+But they saw a long shadow come bobbing up the sunlit road. And then
+came a shorter one bobbing by its side; and presently two strange
+figures approached the church. The long shadow was made by Miss Phoebe
+Summers, the organist, come to practise. Tommy Teague, aged twelve,
+was responsible for the shorter shadow. It was Tommy's day to pump the
+organ for Miss Phoebe, and his bare toes proudly spurned the dust of
+the road.
+
+Miss Phoebe, in her lilac-spray chintz dress, with her accurate little
+curls hanging over each ear, courtesied low to Father Abram, and shook
+her curls ceremoniously at Miss Chester. Then she and her assistant
+climbed the steep stairway to the organ loft.
+
+In the gathering shadows below, Father Abram and Miss Chester
+lingered. They were silent; and it is likely that they were busy with
+their memories. Miss Chester sat, leaning her head on her hand, with
+her eyes fixed far away. Father Abram stood in the next pew, looking
+thoughtfully out of the door at the road and the ruined cottage.
+
+Suddenly the scene was transformed for him back almost a score of
+years into the past. For, as Tommy pumped away, Miss Phoebe struck
+a low bass note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air
+that it contained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram
+was concerned. The deep, booming vibration that shook the little
+frame building was no note from an organ, but the humming of the mill
+machinery. He felt sure that the old overshot-wheel was turning; that
+he was back again, a dusty, merry miller in the old mountain mill. And
+now evening was come, and soon would come Aglaia with flying colours,
+toddling across the road to take him home to supper. Father Abram's
+eyes were fixed upon the broken door of the cottage.
+
+And then came another wonder. In the gallery overhead the sacks of
+flour were stacked in long rows. Perhaps a mouse had been at one of
+them; anyway the jar of the deep organ note shook down between the
+cracks of the gallery floor a stream of flour, covering Father Abram
+from head to foot with the white dust. And then the old miller stepped
+into the aisle, and waved his arms and began to sing the miller's
+song:
+
+
+   "The wheel goes round,
+    The grist is ground,
+       The dusty miller's merry."
+
+
+--and then the rest of the miracle happened. Miss Chester was leaning
+forward from her pew, as pale as the flour itself, her wide-open eyes
+staring at Father Abram like one in a waking dream. When he began the
+song she stretched out her arms to him; her lips moved; she called to
+him in dreamy tones: "Da-da, come take Dums home!"
+
+Miss Phoebe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been
+well done. The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a
+closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his
+arms.
+
+When you visit Lakelands they will tell you more of this story. They
+will tell you how the lines of it were afterward traced, and the
+history of the miller's daughter revealed after the gipsy wanderers
+had stolen her on that September day, attracted by her childish
+beauty. But you should wait until you sit comfortably on the shaded
+porch of the Eagle House, and then you can have the story at your
+ease. It seems best that our part of it should close while Miss
+Phoebe's deep bass note was yet reverberating softly.
+
+And yet, to my mind, the finest thing of it all happened while Father
+Abram and his daughter were walking back to the Eagle House in the
+long twilight, almost too glad to speak.
+
+"Father," she said, somewhat timidly and doubtfully, "have you a great
+deal of money?"
+
+"A great deal?" said the miller. "Well, that depends. There is plenty
+unless you want to buy the moon or something equally expensive."
+
+"Would it cost very, very much," asked Aglaia, who had always counted
+her dimes so carefully, "to send a telegram to Atlanta?"
+
+"Ah," said Father Abram, with a little sigh, "I see. You want to ask
+Ralph to come."
+
+Aglaia looked up at him with a tender smile.
+
+"I want to ask him to wait," she said. "I have just found my father,
+and I want it to be just we two for a while. I want to tell him he
+will have to wait."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT
+
+
+Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York.
+
+We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a
+little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and it
+was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer
+folks that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the metropolis,
+and a week or two at other times, and he was pleased to discourse to
+us of what he had seen.
+
+Fifty yards away from our camp was pitched the teepee of a wandering
+family of Indians that had come up and settled there for the night. An
+old, old Indian woman was trying to build a fire under an iron pot
+hung upon three sticks.
+
+Bud went over to her assistance, and soon had her fire going. When he
+came back we complimented him playfully upon his gallantry.
+
+"Oh," said Bud, "don't mention it. It's a way I have. Whenever I see a
+lady trying to cook things in a pot and having trouble I always go to
+the rescue. I done the same thing once in a high-toned house in. New
+York City. Heap big society teepee on Fifth Avenue. That Injun lady
+kind of recalled it to my mind. Yes, I endeavours to be polite and
+help the ladies out."
+
+The camp demanded the particulars.
+
+"I was manager of the Triangle B Ranch in the Panhandle," said Bud.
+"It was owned at that time by old man Sterling, of New York. He wanted
+to sell out, and he wrote for me to come on to New York and explain
+the ranch to the syndicate that wanted to buy. So I sends to Fort
+Worth and has a forty dollar suit of clothes made, and hits the trail
+for the big village.
+
+"Well, when I got there, old man Sterling and his outfit certainly
+laid themselves out to be agreeable. We had business and pleasure so
+mixed up that you couldn't tell whether it was a treat or a trade half
+the time. We had trolley rides, and cigars, and theatre round-ups, and
+rubber parties."
+
+"Rubber parties?" said a listener, inquiringly.
+
+"Sure," said Bud. "Didn't you never attend 'em? You walk around and
+try to look at the tops of the skyscrapers. Well, we sold the ranch,
+and old man Sterling asks me 'round to his house to take grub on the
+night before I started back. It wasn't any high-collared affair--just
+me and the old man and his wife and daughter. But they was a
+fine-haired outfit all right, and the lilies of the field wasn't in
+it. They made my Fort Worth clothes carpenter look like a dealer in
+horse blankets and gee strings. And then the table was all pompous
+with flowers, and there was a whole kit of tools laid out beside
+everybody's plate. You'd have thought you was fixed out to burglarize
+a restaurant before you could get your grub. But I'd been in New York
+over a week then, and I was getting on to stylish ways. I kind of
+trailed behind and watched the others use the hardware supplies, and
+then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble
+to travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait.  I got
+along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was
+talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West,
+and telling 'em how the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and
+you never saw people so interested.
+
+"But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little
+trick she was, not bigger than two bits' worth of chewing plug; but
+she had a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you
+believed it. And yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me
+the same as if I was a millionaire while I was telling about a Creek
+dog feast and listened like it was news from home.
+
+"By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck
+that never was in my repertory, a Methodist preacher brings in a kind
+of camp stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under
+it.
+
+"Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the
+supper table. I wondered why old man Sterling didn't hire a cook, with
+all the money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting
+truck that she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a
+Molly cotton tail in a mile of it.
+
+"The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought around
+in little flat glass bowls and set by your plate. I was pretty
+thirsty, and I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there
+was where the little lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon
+all right, but she'd forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers slip up
+sometimes. I thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep
+house and cook--that rabbit would surely make you think so--and I says
+to myself, 'Little lady, sugar or no sugar I'll stand by you,' and I
+raises up my bowl again and drinks the last drop of the lemonade. And
+then all the balance of 'em picks up their bowls and does the same.
+And then I gives Miss Sterling the laugh proper, just to carry it off
+like a joke, so she wouldn't feel bad about the mistake.
+
+"After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to me
+quite awhile.
+
+"'It was so kind of you, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, 'to bring my
+blunder off so nicely. It was so stupid of me to forget the sugar.'
+
+"'Never you mind,' says I, 'some lucky man will throw his rope over a
+mighty elegant little housekeeper some day, not far from here.'
+
+"'If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, laughing out loud, 'I hope
+he will be as lenient with my poor housekeeping as you have been.'
+
+"'Don't mention it,' says I. 'Anything to oblige the ladies.'"
+
+Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he
+considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers.
+
+"The most visible and peculiar trait of New York folks," answered Bud,
+"is New York. Most of 'em has New York on the brain. They have heard
+of other places, such as Waco, and Paris, and Hot Springs, and London;
+but they don't believe in 'em. They think that town is all Merino. Now
+to show you how much they care for their village I'll tell you about
+one of 'em that strayed out as far as the Triangle B while I was
+working there.
+
+"This New Yorker come out there looking for a job on the ranch. He
+said he was a good horseback rider, and there was pieces of tanbark
+hanging on his clothes yet from his riding school.
+
+"Well, for a while they put him to keeping books in the ranch store,
+for he was a devil at figures. But he got tired of that, and asked for
+something more in the line of activity. The boys on the ranch liked
+him all right, but he made us tired shouting New York all the time.
+Every night he'd tell us about East River and J. P. Morgan and the
+Eden Musee and Hetty Green and Central Park till we used to throw tin
+plates and branding irons at him.
+
+"One day this chap gets on a pitching pony, and the pony kind of
+sidled up his back and went to eating grass while the New Yorker was
+coming down.
+
+"He come down on his head on a chunk of mesquit wood, and he didn't
+show any designs toward getting up again. We laid him out in a tent,
+and he begun to look pretty dead. So Gideon Pease saddles up and
+burns the wind for old Doc Sleeper's residence in Dogtown, thirty
+miles away.
+
+"The doctor comes over and he investigates the patient.
+
+"'Boys,' says he, 'you might as well go to playing seven-up for his
+saddle and clothes, for his head's fractured and if he lives ten
+minutes it will be a remarkable case of longevity.'
+
+"Of course we didn't gamble for the poor rooster's saddle--that was
+one of Doc's jokes. But we stood around feeling solemn, and all of us
+forgive him for having talked us to death about New York.
+
+"I never saw anybody about to hand in his checks act more peaceful
+than this fellow. His eyes were fixed 'way up in the air, and he was
+using rambling words to himself all about sweet music and beautiful
+streets and white-robed forms, and he was smiling like dying was a
+pleasure.
+
+"'He's about gone now,' said Doc. 'Whenever they begin to think they
+see heaven it's all off.'
+
+"Blamed if that New York man didn't sit right up when he heard the Doc
+say that.
+
+"'Say,' says he, kind of disappointed, 'was that heaven? Confound it
+all, I thought it was Broadway. Some of you fellows get my clothes.
+I'm going to get up.'
+
+"And I'll be blamed," concluded Bud, "if he wasn't on the train with a
+ticket for New York in his pocket four days afterward!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES
+
+
+I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York
+detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the
+"inside man" of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use
+of the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a "murder
+mystery" to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and
+take down the messages of "cranks" who 'phone in their confessions to
+having committed the crime.
+
+But on certain "off" days when confessions are coming in slowly and
+three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty
+persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my
+great delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation
+and deduction.
+
+The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great
+detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around
+his little finger.
+
+"Good morning, Whatsup," he said, without turning his head. "I'm glad
+to notice that you've had your house fitted up with electric lights at
+last."
+
+"Will you please tell me," I said, in surprise, "how you knew that? I
+am sure that I never mentioned the fact to any one, and the wiring was
+a rush order not completed until this morning."
+
+"Nothing easier," said Jolnes, genially. "As you came in I caught the
+odour of the cigar you are smoking. I know an expensive cigar; and
+I know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke
+cigars and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy
+one. But I am working just now on a little problem of my own."
+
+"Why have you that string on your finger?" I asked.
+
+"That's the problem," said Jolnes. "My wife tied that on this morning
+to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down,
+Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments."
+
+The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with
+the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.
+
+"Were you listening to a confession?" I asked, when he had returned to
+his chair.
+
+"Perhaps," said Jolnes, with a smile, "it might be called something of
+the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I've cut out the dope. I've
+been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn't have
+much effect on me any more. I've got to have something more powerful.
+That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf
+where there's an author's reading in progress. Now, to get at the
+solution of this string."
+
+After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a
+smile, and nodded his head.
+
+"Wonderful man!" I exclaimed; "already?"
+
+"It is quite simple," he said, holding up his finger. "You see
+that knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a
+forget-me-knot. A forget-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour
+that I was to send home!"
+
+"Beautiful!" I could not help crying out in admiration.
+
+"Suppose we go out for a ramble," suggested Jolnes.
+
+"There is only one case of importance on hand just now. Old man
+McCarty, one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many
+bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police
+have surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2,
+and the capture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The
+detective force has not yet been called on for assistance."
+
+Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we
+were to catch a surface car.
+
+Half-way up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who
+held a City Hall position.
+
+"Good morning, Rheingelder," said Jolnes, halting.
+
+"Nice breakfast that was you had this morning."
+
+Always on the lookout for the detective's remarkable feats of
+deduction, I saw Jolnes's eye flash for an instant upon a long
+yellow splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of
+Rheingelder--both undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.
+
+"Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness," said Rheingelder, shaking all
+over with a smile. "Vell, I pet you trinks und cigars all round dot
+you cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast."
+
+"Done," said Jolnes. "Sausage, pumpernickel and coffee."
+
+Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet.
+When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes:
+
+"I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front."
+
+"I did," said Jolnes. "That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder
+is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday eggs dropped in the market
+to twenty-eight cents per dozen. To-day they are quoted at forty-two.
+Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual
+fare. A little thing like this isn't anything, Whatsup; it belongs to
+the primary arithmetic class."
+
+When we boarded the street car we found the seats all
+occupied--principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear
+platform.
+
+About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short,
+gray beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At
+successive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four
+of them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring
+meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely
+retained his place.
+
+"We New Yorkers," I remarked to Jolnes, "have about lost our manners,
+as far as the exercise of them in public goes."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Jolnes, lightly; "but the man you evidently refer
+to happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old
+Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two
+daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night."
+
+"You know him, then?" I said, in amazement.
+
+"I never saw him before we stepped on the car," declared the
+detective, smilingly.
+
+"By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can
+construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else
+than black art."
+
+"The habit of observation--nothing more," said Jolnes. "If the old
+gentleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to
+you the accuracy of my deduction."
+
+Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes
+addressed him at the door:
+
+"Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk,
+Virginia?"
+
+"No, suh," was the extremely courteous answer. "My name, suh, is
+Ellison--Major Winfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same
+state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk--the Goodriches, the
+Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of
+meeting yo' friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am
+going back to Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo' city
+with my wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten
+days, and if you will give me yo' name, suh, I will take pleasure in
+looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him,
+suh."
+
+"Thank you," said Jolnes; "tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if
+you will be so kind."
+
+I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of
+intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the
+slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.
+
+"Did you say your _three_ daughters?" he asked of the Virginia
+gentleman.
+
+"Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in
+Fairfax County," was the answer.
+
+With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.
+
+Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.
+
+"One moment, sir," he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone
+detected the anxiety--"am I not right in believing that one of the
+young ladies is an _adopted_ daughter?"
+
+"You are, suh," admitted the major, from the ground, "but how the
+devil you knew it, suh, is mo' than I can tell."
+
+"And mo' than I can tell, too," I said, as the car went on.
+
+Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested
+victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he
+invited me into a cafe, promising to reveal the process of his latest
+wonderful feat.
+
+"In the first place," he began after we were comfortably seated, "I
+knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy
+and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he
+did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance
+that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.
+
+"Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat
+to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly,
+impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that
+one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red
+and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about
+the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his
+patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals
+cut off square at one end.
+
+"Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound
+to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort--and that
+is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth
+Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French
+heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from
+umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that
+he had been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a
+man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such
+dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk.
+Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had
+received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his
+traditions of Southern chivalry."
+
+"That is all very well," I said, "but why did you insist upon
+daughters--and especially two daughters? Why couldn't a wife alone
+have taken him shopping?"
+
+"There had to be daughters," said Jolnes, calmly. "If he had only a
+wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going
+alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there
+you are."
+
+"I'll admit that," I said; "but, now, why two daughters? And how, in
+the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when
+he told you he had three?"
+
+"Don't say guess," said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air;
+"there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major
+Ellison's buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a
+geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into
+a boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your
+imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the
+carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And
+then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add
+her rosebud to the adornment?"
+
+"And then," I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, "when he declared
+that he had three daughters--"
+
+"I could see," said Jolnes, "one in the background who added no
+flower; and I knew that she must be--"
+
+"Adopted!" I broke in. "I give you every credit; but how did you know
+he was leaving for the South to-night?"
+
+"In his breast pocket," said the great detective, "something large and
+oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a
+long journey from New York to Fairfax County."
+
+"Again, I must bow to you," I said. "And tell me this, so that my last
+shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was
+from Virginia?"
+
+"It was very faint, I admit," answered Shamrock Jolnes, "but no
+trained observer could have failed to detect the odour of mint in the
+car."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE LADY HIGHER UP
+
+
+New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless,
+for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze
+was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of
+feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five
+feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on
+Manhattan pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in
+the direction of her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of
+the great Garden were out; the benches in the Square were filled with
+sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures
+in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno would have straightened into
+tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden--its
+constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating
+of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to style by its single,
+graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of
+ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift
+flight to catch a Harlem train--remained poised with its arrow pointed
+across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it
+would have passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose
+duty it is to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other
+lands.
+
+Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began
+to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden
+upon her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened
+her) would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size
+of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to
+"enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it)
+requires abler qualities. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a
+sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua
+schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid,
+classic lake. With a fireless torch and an empty head must she dispel
+the shadows of the world and teach it its A, B, C's.
+
+"Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!" called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
+through the still, midnight air.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as
+flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And 'tis so hoarse I am I can
+hardly talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me
+throat by that last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. 'Tis
+after being a fine evening, miss."
+
+"If you don't mind my asking," came the bell-like tones of the golden
+statue, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I
+didn't know that Liberty was necessarily Irish."
+
+"If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications
+ye'd not need to ask," replied the offshore statue. "If ye wasn't
+so light-headed and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a <DW55> and
+presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government
+for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of
+New York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was erected.
+Ye must know, Miss Diana, that 'tis with statues the same as with
+people--'tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were
+created that influence the operations of their tongues at all--it's
+the associations with which they become associated, I'm telling ye."
+
+"You're dead right," agreed Diana. "I notice it on myself. If any of
+the old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air
+in the ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a
+Coney Island car conductor and a five-cent fare."
+
+"I'm right glad ye've made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,"
+said Mrs. Liberty. "'Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there
+anything doin' up in the city, Miss Diana, dear?"
+
+"Oh, la, la, la!--no," said Diana. "Notice that 'la, la, la,' Aunt
+Liberty? Got that from 'Paris by Night' on the roof garden under me.
+You'll hear that 'la, la, la' at the Cafe McCann now, along with
+'garsong.' The bohemian crowd there have become tired of 'garsong'
+since O'Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of them for calling
+him it. Oh, no; the town's strickly on the bum these nights.
+Everybody's away. Saw a downtown merchant on a roof garden this
+evening with his stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep. A
+waiter biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up.
+He looks around and sees his little pothooks perpetrator. 'H'm!' says
+he, 'will you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?' 'Sure, in a
+minute,' says she, 'if you'll make it an X.'
+
+"That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
+is. La, la, la!"
+
+"'Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the
+cat show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the
+privates look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand
+as floor-walkers. And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl
+that measures 36, 19, 45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam
+on the banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the
+Vanderbilts, Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And
+ye have the French ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert
+Emmet-Sangerbund Society dance the Highland fling one with another.
+And ye have the grand O'Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant
+in the world, where the French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers
+in doin' the cake walk. Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole
+town, Miss Diana.
+
+"'Tis weary work," sighed the island statue, "disseminatin' the
+science of liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down
+at Ellis Island and see the gang of immigrants I'm supposed to light
+up, 'tis tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write
+out their naturalization papers."
+
+"Say, it's a shame, ain't it, to give you the worst end of it?" came
+the sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. "It must be
+awfully lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don't see
+how you ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are
+wearing went out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to
+be held for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady.
+That's where Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. I'm always a little ahead of
+the styles; but they're coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a
+moment--I caught a puff of wind from the north--shouldn't wonder if
+things had loosened up in Esopus. There, now! it's in the West--I
+should think that gold plank would have calmed the air out in that
+direction. What were you saying, Mrs. Liberty?"
+
+"A fine chat I've had with ye, Miss Diana, ma'am, but I see one
+of them European steamers a-sailin' up the Narrows, and I must be
+attendin' to me duties. 'Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of
+Liberty to welcome all them that survive the kicks that the steerage
+stewards give 'em while landin.' Sure 'tis a great country ye can come
+to for $8.50, and the doctor waitin' to send ye back home free if he
+sees yer eyes red from cryin' for it."
+
+The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many points
+on the horizon with its aureate arrow.
+
+"So long, Aunt Liberty," sweetly called Diana of the Tower. "Some
+night, when the wind's right. I'll call you up again. But--say! you
+haven't got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I've kept a
+pretty good watch on the island of Manhattan since I've been up here.
+That's a pretty sick-looking bunch of liberty chasers they dump down
+at your end of it; but they don't all stay that way. Every little
+while up here I see guys signing checks and voting the right ticket,
+and encouraging the arts and taking a bath every morning, that was
+shoved ashore by a dock labourer born in the United States who never
+earned over forty dollars a month. Don't run down your job, Aunt
+Liberty; you're all right, all right."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE GREATER CONEY
+
+
+"Next Sunday," said Dennis Carnahan, "I'll be after going down to see
+the new Coney Island that's risen like a phoenix bird from the ashes
+of the old resort. I'm going with Norah Flynn, and we'll fall victims
+to all the dry goods deceptions, from the red-flannel eruption of
+Mount Vesuvius to the pink silk ribbons on the race-suicide problems
+in the incubator kiosk.
+
+"Was I there before? I was. I was there last Tuesday. Did I see the
+sights? I did not.
+
+"Last Monday I amalgamated myself with the Bricklayers' Union, and in
+accordance with the rules I was ordered to quit work the same day on
+account of a sympathy strike with the Lady Salmon Canners' Lodge No.2,
+of Tacoma, Washington.
+
+"'Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job,
+bein' already harassed in me soul on account of havin' quarrelled
+with Norah Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the
+Dairymen and Street-Sprinkler Drivers' semi-annual ball, caused by
+jealousy and prickly heat and that divil, Andy Coghlin.
+
+"So, I says, it will be Coney for Tuesday; and if the chutes and the
+short change and the green-corn silk between the teeth don't create
+diversions and get me feeling better, then I don't know at all.
+
+"Ye will have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The
+old Bowery, where they used to take your tintype by force and give ye
+knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall
+Street of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to
+keep a news ticker in 'em; and the doughnuts are examined every four
+years by a retired steamboat inspector. The <DW65> man's head that
+was used by the old patrons to throw baseballs at is now illegal;
+and, by order of the Police Commissioner the image of a man drivin'
+an automobile has been substituted. I hear that the old immoral
+amusements have been suppressed. People who used to go down from New
+York to sit in the sand and dabble in the surf now give up their
+quarters to squeeze through turnstiles and see imitations of city
+fires and floods painted on canvas. The reprehensible and degradin'
+resorts that disgraced old Coney are said to be wiped out. The
+wipin'-out process consists of raisin' the price from 10 cents to 25
+cents, and hirin' a blonde named Maudie to sell tickets instead of
+Micky, the Bowery Bite. That's what they say--I don't know.
+
+"But to Coney I goes a-Tuesday. I gets off the 'L' and starts for the
+glitterin' show. 'Twas a fine sight. The Babylonian towers and the
+Hindoo roof gardens was blazin' with thousands of electric lights, and
+the streets was thick with people. 'Tis a true thing they say that
+Coney levels all rank. I see millionaires eatin' popcorn and trampin'
+along with the crowd; and I see eight-dollar-a-week clothin'-store
+clerks in red automobiles fightin' one another for who'd squeeze the
+horn when they come to a corner.
+
+"'I made a mistake,' I says to myself. 'Twas not Coney I needed.
+When a man's sad 'tis not scenes of hilarity he wants. 'Twould be
+far better for him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services
+at the Paradise Roof Gardens. 'Tis no consolation when a man's lost
+his sweetheart to order hot corn and have the waiter bring him the
+powdered sugar cruet instead of salt and then conceal himself, or to
+have Zozookum, the gipsy palmist, tell him that he has three children
+and to look out for another serious calamity; price twenty-five cents.
+
+"I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion
+near one corner of this new private park, Dreamland. A year ago that
+old pavilion was standin' up straight and the old-style waiters was
+slammin' a week's supply of clam chowder down in front of you for a
+nickel and callin' you 'cully' friendly, and vice was rampant, and you
+got back to New York with enough change to take a car at the bridge.
+Now they tell me that they serve Welsh rabbits on Surf Avenue, and you
+get the right change back in the movin'-picture joints.
+
+"I sat down at one side of the old pavilion and looked at the surf
+spreadin' itself on the beach, and thought about the time me and Norah
+Flynn sat on that spot last summer. 'Twas before reform struck the
+island; and we was happy. We had tintypes and chowder in the ribald
+dives, and the Egyptian Sorceress of the Nile told Norah out of her
+hand, while I was waitin' in the door, that 'twould be the luck of
+her to marry a red-headed gossoon with two crooked legs, and I was
+overrunnin' with joy on account of the allusion. And 'twas there that
+Norah Flynn put her two hands in mine a year before and we talked of
+flats and the things she could cook and the love business that goes
+with such episodes. And that was Coney as we loved it, and as the hand
+of Satan was upon it, friendly and noisy and your money's worth, with
+no fence around the ocean and not too many electric lights to show the
+sleeve of a black serge coat against a white shirtwaist.
+
+"I sat with my back to the parks where they had the moon and the
+dreams and the steeples corralled, and longed for the old Coney. There
+wasn't many people on the beach. Lots of them was feedin' pennies into
+the slot machines to see the 'Interrupted Courtship' in the movin'
+pictures; and a good many was takin' the sea air in the Canals of
+Venice and some was breathin' the smoke of the sea battle by actual
+warships in a tank filled with real water. A few was down on the sands
+enjoyin' the moonlight and the water. And the heart of me was heavy
+for the new morals of the old island, while the bands behind me played
+and the sea pounded on the bass drum in front.
+
+"And directly I got up and walked along the old pavilion, and there
+on the other side of, half in the dark, was a slip of a girl sittin'
+on the tumble-down timbers, and unless I'm a liar she was cryin' by
+herself there, all alone.
+
+"'Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,' says I; 'and what's to be done
+about it?'
+
+"''Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,' says she,
+sittin' up straight. And it was the voice of no other than Norah
+Flynn.
+
+"'Then it's not,' says I, 'and we're after having a pleasant evening,
+Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this new Coney Island, then? I
+presume ye have come here for that purpose,' says I.
+
+"'I have,' says she. 'Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting beyond.
+'Tis an elegant evening I've had. I've seen all the attractions that
+be.'
+
+"'Right ye are,' says I to Norah; and I don't know when I've been
+that amused. After disportin' me-self among the most laughable moral
+improvements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore
+for the benefit of the cool air. 'And did ye observe the Durbar, Miss
+Flynn?'
+
+"'I did,' says she, reflectin'; 'but 'tis not safe, I'm thinkin', to
+ride down them slantin' things into the water.'
+
+"'How did ye fancy the shoot the chutes?' I asks.
+
+"'True, then, I'm afraid of guns,' says Norah. 'They make such noise
+in my ears. But Uncle Tim, he shot them, he did, and won cigars. 'Tis
+a fine time we had this day, Mr. Carnahan.'
+
+"'I'm glad you've enjoyed yerself,' I says. 'I suppose you've had a
+roarin' fine time seein' the sights. And how did the incubators and
+the helter-skelter and the <DW40>s suit the taste of ye?'
+
+"'I--I wasn't hungry,' says Norah, faint. 'But mother ate a quantity
+of all of 'em. I'm that pleased with the fine things in the new Coney
+Island,' says she, 'that it's the happiest day I've seen in a long
+time, at all.'
+
+"'Did you see Venice?' says I.
+
+"'We did,' says she. 'She was a beauty. She was all dressed in red,
+she was, with--'
+
+"I listened no more to Norah Flynn. I stepped up and I gathered her
+in my arms.
+
+"''Tis a story-teller ye are, Norah Flynn', says I. 'Ye've seen no
+more of the greater Coney Island than I have meself. Come, now, tell
+the truth--ye came to sit by the old pavilion by the waves where you
+sat last summer and made Dennis Carnahan a happy man. Speak up, and
+tell the truth.'
+
+"Norah stuck her nose against me vest.
+
+"'I despise it, Denny,' she says, half cryin'. 'Mother and Uncle
+Tim went to see the shows, but I came down here to think of you. I
+couldn't bear the lights and the crowd. Are you forgivin' me, Denny,
+for the words we had?'
+
+"''Twas me fault,' says I. 'I came here for the same reason meself.
+Look at the lights, Norah,' I says, turning my back to the sea--'ain't
+they pretty?'
+
+"'They are,' says Norah, with her eyes shinin'; 'and do ye hear the
+bands playin'? Oh, Denny, I think I'd like to see it all.'
+
+"'The old Coney is gone, darlin',' I says to her. 'Everything moves.
+When a man's glad it's not scenes of sadness he wants. 'Tis a greater
+Coney we have here, but we couldn't see it till we got in the humour
+for it. Next Sunday, Norah darlin', we'll see the new place from end
+to end."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+LAW AND ORDER
+
+
+I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas. At
+a sheep ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a
+week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the business at
+hand, which happened to be that of dipping the sheep.
+
+Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that it
+deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half the fires
+of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils
+furiously. Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur,
+which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches' broth is strong
+enough to scorch the third arm of Palladino herself.
+
+Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with cubic
+gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their hind legs and
+flung into the compound. After being thoroughly ducked by means of a
+forked pole in the hands of a gentleman detailed for that purpose,
+they are allowed to clamber up an incline into a corral and dry or
+die, as the state of their constitutions may decree. If you ever
+caught an able-bodied, two-year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt
+the 750 volts of kicking that he can send though your arm seventeen
+times before you can hurl him into the vat, you will, of course, hope
+that he may die instead of dry.
+
+But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched
+ourselves on the bank of the nearby _charco_ after the dipping, glad
+for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our
+muscle-racking labours. The flock was a small one, and we finished at
+three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from the _morral_ on his saddle
+horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side
+bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the
+ranch with his force of Mexican _trabajadores_.
+
+While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of horses'
+hoofs behind us. Bud's six-shooter lay in its scabbard ten feet away
+from his hand. He paid not the slightest heed to the approaching
+horseman. This attitude of a Texas ranchman was so different from the
+old-time custom that I marvelled. Instinctively I turned to inspect
+the possible foe that menaced us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed
+in black, who might have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker,
+trotting peaceably along the road by the _arroyo_.
+
+Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled sarcastically and
+sorrowfully.
+
+"You've been away too long," said he. "You don't need to look around
+any more when anybody gallops up behind you in this state, unless
+something hits you in the back; and even then it's liable to be only
+a bunch of tracts or a petition to sign against the trusts. I never
+looked at that _hombre_ that rode by; but I'll bet a quart of sheep
+dip that he's some double-dyed son of a popgun out rounding up
+prohibition votes."
+
+"Times have changed, Bud," said I, oracularly. "Law and order is the
+rule now in the South and the Southwest."
+
+I caught a cold gleam from Bud's pale blue eyes.
+
+"Not that I--" I began, hastily.
+
+"Of course you don't," said Bud warmly. "You know better. You've
+lived here before. Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we had
+'em here. We only had two or three laws, such as against murder before
+witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and voting the Republican
+ticket. But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out
+of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do
+nothing but make laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being
+brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go
+home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go
+to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old
+days when law and order meant what they said. A law was a law, and a
+order was a order."
+
+"But--" I began.
+
+"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling, to
+describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of once
+in the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a six-shooter
+instead of a supreme court.
+
+"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run
+from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know, there
+was cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was this: when
+a cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper
+reporters and only give them the number of cattle he actually owned,
+they wrote him up for a baron. When he bought 'em champagne wine and
+added in the amount of cattle he had stole, they called him a king.
+
+"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's
+ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New York
+or Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a squad to
+ride about with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning
+when they was coming, and drive the deer out of their way. Among the
+bunch was a black-eyed girl that wore a number two shoe. That's all I
+noticed about her. But Luke must have seen more, for he married her
+one day before the _caballard_ started back, and went over on Canada
+Verde and set up a ranch of his own. I'm skipping over the sentimental
+stuff on purpose, because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And
+Luke takes me along with him because we was old friends and I handled
+cattle to suit him.
+
+"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or wanted
+to see any of it--but three years afterward there was a boy kid
+stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke's
+ranch. I never had no use for kids; but it seems they did. And I'm
+skipping over much what followed until one day out to the ranch drives
+in hacks and buckboards a lot of Mrs. Summers's friends from the
+East--a sister or so and two or three men. One looked like an uncle
+to somebody; and one looked like nothing; and the other one had on
+corkscrew pants and spoke in a tone of voice. I never liked a man who
+spoke in a tone of voice.
+
+"I'm skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides
+up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves that
+was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits
+at the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs. In
+a little while Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his
+Mexican hands, and they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles;
+and mighty soon out comes one of the sisters or so and some of the two
+or three men. But two of the two or three men carries between 'em the
+corkscrew man who spoke in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in
+one of the wagons. And they all might have been seen wending their way
+away.
+
+"'Bud,' says Luke to me, 'I want you to fix up a little and go up to
+San Antone with me.'
+
+"'Let me get on my Mexican spurs,' says I, 'and I'm your company.'
+
+"One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with
+Mrs. Summers and the kid. We rides to Encinal and catches the
+International, and hits San Antone in the morning. After breakfast
+Luke steers me straight to the office of a lawyer. They go in a room
+and talk and then come out.
+
+"'Oh, there won't be any trouble, Mr. Summers,' says the lawyer. 'I'll
+acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the matter will be
+put through as promptly as possible. Law and order reigns in this
+state as swift and sure as any in the country.'
+
+"'I'll wait for the decree if it won't take over half an hour,' says
+Luke.
+
+"'Tut, tut,' says the lawyer man. 'Law must take its course. Come back
+day after to-morrow at half-past nine.'
+
+"At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a folded
+document. And Luke writes him out a check.
+
+"On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the
+size of a kitchen door latch on it and says:
+
+"'Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.'
+
+"'Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,' says
+I, 'it looks to me like a split. Couldn't the lawyer man have made it
+a strike for you?'
+
+"'Bud,' says he, in a pained style, 'that child is the one thing I
+have to live for. _She_ may go; but the boy is mine!--think of it--I
+have cus-to-dy of the child.'
+
+"'All right,' says I. 'If it's the law, let's abide by it. But I
+think,' says I, 'that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary
+clemency, or whatever is the legal term, in our case.'
+
+"You see, I wasn't inveigled much into the desirableness of having
+infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell
+for so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with
+that sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All
+the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling
+that decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it
+and reading off to me the sum and substance of it. 'Cus-to-dy of the
+child, Bud,' says he. 'Don't forget it--cus-to-dy of the child.'
+
+"But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court obviated,
+_nolle prossed_, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and the kid
+was gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for
+San Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the nearest station
+with her trunks and the youngster.
+
+"Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its emoluments.
+
+"'It ain't possible, Bud,' says he, 'for this to be. It's contrary
+to law and order. It's wrote as plain as day here--"Cus-to-dy of the
+child."'
+
+"'There is what you might call a human leaning,' says I, 'toward
+smashing 'em both--not to mention the child.'
+
+"'Judge Simmons,' goes on Luke, 'is a incorporated officer of the law.
+She can't take the boy away. He belongs to me by statutes passed and
+approved by the state of Texas.'
+
+"'And he's removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,' says
+I, 'by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us praise the
+Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies--' I begins; but I see
+Luke don't listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a fresh horse
+and starts back again for the station.
+
+"He come back two weeks afterward, not saying much.
+
+"'We can't get the trail,' says he; 'but we've done all the
+telegraphing that the wires'll stand, and we've got these city rangers
+they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime, Bud,' says he,
+'we'll round up them cows on Brush Creek, and wait for the law to take
+its course.'"
+
+"And after that we never alluded to allusions, as you might say.
+
+"Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke was
+made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy. Now,
+don't get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office deputy doing
+sums in a book or mashing letters in a cider press. In them days his
+job was to watch the back windows so nobody didn't plug the sheriff
+in the rear while he was adding up mileage at his desk in front. And
+in them days I had qualifications for the job. And there was law
+and order in Mojada County, and schoolbooks, and all the whiskey
+you wanted, and the Government built its own battleships instead of
+collecting nickels from the school children to do it with. And, as I
+say, there was law and order instead of enactments and restrictions
+such as disfigure our umpire state to-day. We had our office at
+Bildad, the county seat, from which we emerged forth on necessary
+occasions to soothe whatever fracases and unrest that might occur in
+our jurisdiction.
+
+"Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff, I
+want to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them days.
+Luke was what you would call one of the most conscious men in the
+world. He never knew much book law, but he had the inner emoluments of
+justice and mercy inculcated into his system. If a respectable citizen
+shot a Mexican or held up a train and cleaned out the safe in the
+express car, and Luke ever got hold of him, he'd give the guilty party
+such a reprimand and a cussin' out that he'd probable never do it
+again. But once let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish
+pony), or cut a wire fence, or otherwise impair the peace and
+indignity of Mojada County, Luke and me would be on 'em with habeas
+corpuses and smokeless powder and all the modern inventions of equity
+and etiquette.
+
+"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I've known
+persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and
+buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches
+at the railroad station without being shot at or even roped and drug
+about by the citizens of the town.
+
+"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of
+training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was always
+looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What he wanted
+to do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work under the porch
+and have hens scratching in the yard. The one main thing in his mind
+seemed to be the yard.
+
+"'Bud,' he says to me, 'by instinct and sentiment I'm a contractor.
+I want to be a contractor. That's what I'll be when I get out of
+office.'
+
+"'What kind of a contractor?' says I. 'It sounds like a kind of a
+business to me. You ain't going to haul cement or establish branches
+or work on a railroad, are you?'
+
+"'You don't understand,' says Luke. 'I'm tired of space and horizons
+and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is
+reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you
+can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,'
+says Luke.
+
+"That's the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he'd had
+bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on
+the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it. I wondered how,
+with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of lattice-work, he'd
+seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken
+away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he
+wasn't a man you could ask about such things as he didn't refer to in
+his own conversation.
+
+"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff.
+I've read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic
+and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing
+truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation
+like painting pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or teaching
+school--something to make 'em forget. Well, I guess that was the way
+with Luke. But, as he couldn't paint pictures, he took it out in
+rounding up horse thieves and in making Mojada County a safe place
+to sleep in if you was well armed and not afraid of requisitions or
+tarantulas.
+
+"One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors
+from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner
+station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico
+looking after mines and such. There was five of 'em--four solid
+parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred
+pounds on the hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.
+
+"This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots
+bring West with 'em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple
+of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun
+he had buckled around his waist.
+
+"I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that
+they didn't locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front
+of Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a
+gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the
+law and order when he wasn't there.
+
+"After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the train
+was waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all
+antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest
+or come too near him. He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all
+them tenderfoots--he didn't know a law-and-order town when he saw it.
+
+"By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the Crystal
+Palace _chili-con-carne_ stand in Bildad. Pedro was a man who liked to
+amuse himself; so he kind of herd rides this youngster, laughing at
+him, tickled to death. I was too far away to hear, but the kid seems
+to mention some remarks to Pedro, and Pedro goes up and slaps him
+about nine feet away, and laughs harder than ever. And then the boy
+gets up quicker than he fell and jerks out his little pearl-handle,
+and--bing! bing! bing! Pedro gets it three times in special and
+treasured portions of his carcass. I saw the dust fly off his clothes
+every time the bullets hit. Sometimes them little thirty-twos cause
+worry at close range.
+
+"The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I goes
+up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away his gun. But
+the first thing I knew that _caballard_ of capitalists makes a break
+for the train. One of 'em hesitates in front of me for a second, and
+kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against my chin, and I sort of
+laid down on the platform and took a nap. I never was afraid of guns;
+but I don't want any person except a barber to take liberties like
+that with my face again. When I woke up, the whole outfit--train, boy,
+and all--was gone. I asked about Pedro, and they told me the doctor
+said he would recover provided his wounds didn't turn out to be fatal.
+
+"When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was
+mad all over.
+
+"'Why'n't you telegraph to San Antone,' he asks, 'and have the bunch
+arrested there?'
+
+"'Oh, well,' says I, 'I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy
+was what I had took up just then.' That capitalist sure knew how to
+gesticulate with his hands.
+
+"Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the depot
+a card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of some
+_hombre_ called Scudder in New York City.
+
+"'Bud,' says Luke, 'I'm going after that bunch. I'm going there and
+get the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back. I'm sheriff
+of Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts
+while I'm able to draw a gun. And I want you to go with me. No Eastern
+Yankee can shoot up a respectable and well-known citizen of Bildad,
+'specially with a thirty-two calibre, and escape the law. Pedro
+Johnson,' says Luke, 'is one of our most prominent citizens and
+business men. I'll appoint Sam Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary
+powers while I'm away, and you and me will take the six forty-five
+northbound to-morrow evening and follow up this trail.'
+
+"'I'm your company,' says I. 'I never see this New York, but I'd like
+to. But, Luke,' says I, 'don't you have to have a dispensation or a
+habeas corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far
+for rich men and malefactors?'
+
+"'Did I have a requisition,' says Luke, 'when I went over into the
+Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for holding
+up the International? Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse
+comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in
+Hidalgo? It's my business to keep order in Mojada County.'
+
+"'And it's my business as office deputy,' says I, 'to see that
+business is carried on according to law. Between us both we ought to
+keep things pretty well cleaned up.'
+
+"So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his
+mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for New
+York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was too short
+for six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and the conductor had
+to keep us from getting off at every town that had five-story houses
+in it. But we got there finally; and we seemed to see right away that
+he was right about it.
+
+"'Luke,' says I, 'as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it don't
+look to me like this place is properly and legally in the jurisdiction
+of Mojada County, Texas.'
+
+"'From the standpoint of order,' says he, 'it's amenable to answer
+for its sins to the properly appointed authorities from Bildad to
+Jerusalem.'
+
+"'Amen,' says I. 'But let's turn our trick sudden, and ride. I don't
+like the looks of this place.'
+
+"'Think of Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, 'a friend of mine and yours shot
+down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very door!'
+
+"'It was at the door of the freight depot,' says I. 'But the law will
+not be balked at a quibble like that.'
+
+"We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next morning I
+goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom and hunts for
+Luke. It ain't no use. It looks like San Jacinto day in San Antone.
+There's a thousand folks milling around in a kind of a roofed-over
+plaza with marble pavements and trees growing right out of 'em, and I
+see no more chance of finding Luke than if we was hunting each other
+in the big pear flat down below Old Fort Ewell. But soon Luke and me
+runs together in one of the turns of them marble alleys.
+
+"'It ain't no use, Bud,' says he. 'I can't find no place to eat at.
+I've been looking for restaurant signs and smelling for ham all over
+the camp. But I'm used to going hungry when I have to. Now,' says he,
+'I'm going out and get a hack and ride down to the address on this
+Scudder card. You stay here and try to hustle some grub. But I doubt
+if you'll find it. I wish we'd brought along some cornmeal and bacon
+and beans. I'll be back when I see this Scudder, if the trail ain't
+wiped out.'
+
+"So I starts foraging for breakfast. For the honour of old Mojada
+County I didn't want to seem green to them abolitionists, so every
+time I turned a corner in them marble halls I went up to the first
+desk or counter I see and looks around for grub. If I didn't see what
+I wanted I asked for something else. In about half an hour I had
+a dozen cigars, five story magazines, and seven or eight railroad
+time-tables in my pockets, and never a smell of coffee or bacon to
+point out the trail.
+
+"Once a lady sitting at a table and playing a game kind of like
+pushpin told me to go into a closet that she called Number 3. I went
+in and shut the door, and the blamed thing lit itself up. I set down
+on a stool before a shelf and waited. Thinks I, 'This is a private
+dining-room.' But no waiter never came. When I got to sweating good
+and hard, I goes out again.
+
+"'Did you get what you wanted?' says she.
+
+"'No, ma'am,' says I. 'Not a bite.'
+
+"'Then there's no charge,' says she.
+
+"'Thanky, ma'am,' says I, and I takes up the trail again.
+
+"By and by I thinks I'll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of them
+boys with blue clothes and yellow buttons in front, and he leads me to
+what he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the first thing I lays my
+eyes on when I go in is that boy that had shot Pedro Johnson. He was
+setting all alone at a little table, hitting a egg with a spoon like
+he was afraid he'd break it.
+
+"I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks insulted
+and makes a move like he was going to get up.
+
+"'Keep still, son,' says I. 'You're apprehended, arrested, and in
+charge of the Texas authorities. Go on and hammer that egg some
+more if it's the inside of it you want. Now, what did you shoot Mr.
+Johnson, of Bildad, for?'
+
+"And may I ask who you are?' says he.
+
+"'You may,' says I. 'Go ahead.'
+
+"'I suppose you're on,' says this kid, without batting his eyes. 'But
+what are you eating? Here, waiter!' he calls out, raising his finger.
+'Take this gentleman's order.
+
+"'A beefsteak,' says I, 'and some fried eggs and a can of peaches and
+a quart of coffee will about suffice.'
+
+"We talk awhile about the sundries of life and then he says:
+
+"'What are you going to do about that shooting? I had a right to shoot
+that man,' says he. 'He called me names that I couldn't overlook, and
+then he struck me. He carried a gun, too. What else could I do?'
+
+"'We'll have to take you back to Texas,' says I.
+
+"'I'd like to go back,' says the boy, with a kind of a grin--'if it
+wasn't on an occasion of this kind. It's the life I like. I've always
+wanted to ride and shoot and live in the open air ever since I can
+remember.'
+
+"'Who was this gang of stout parties you took this trip with?' I asks.
+
+"'My stepfather,' says he, 'and some business partners of his in some
+Mexican mining and land schemes.'
+
+"'I saw you shoot Pedro Johnson,' says I, 'and I took that little
+popgun away from you that you did it with. And when I did so I noticed
+three or four little scars in a row over your right eyebrow. You've
+been in rookus before, haven't you?'
+
+"'I've had these scars ever since I can remember,' says he. 'I don't
+know how they came there.'
+
+"'Was you ever in Texas before?' says I.
+
+"'Not that I remember of,' says he. 'But I thought I had when we
+struck the prairie country. But I guess I hadn't.'
+
+"'Have you got a mother?' I asks.
+
+"'She died five years ago,' says he.
+
+"Skipping over the most of what followed--when Luke came back I turned
+the kid over to him. He had seen Scudder and told him what he wanted;
+and it seems that Scudder got active with one of these telephones as
+soon as he left. For in about an hour afterward there comes to our
+hotel some of these city rangers in everyday clothes that they call
+detectives, and marches the whole outfit of us to what they call a
+magistrate's court. They accuse Luke of attempted kidnapping, and ask
+him what he has to say.
+
+"'This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, 'shot and wilfully punctured
+with malice and forethought one of the most respected and prominent
+citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing
+laid himself liable to the penitence of law and order. And I hereby
+make claim and demand restitution of the State of New York City for
+the said alleged criminal; and I know he done it.'
+
+"'Have you the usual and necessary requisition papers from the
+governor of your state?' asks the judge.
+
+"'My usual papers,' says Luke, 'was taken away from me at the hotel by
+these gentlemen who represent law and order in your city. They was two
+Colt's .45's that I've packed for nine years; and if I don't get 'em
+back, there'll be more trouble. You can ask anybody in Mojada County
+about Luke Summers. I don't usually need any other kind of papers for
+what I do.'
+
+"I see the judge looks mad, so I steps up and says:
+
+"'Your Honor, the aforesaid defendant, Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff of
+Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a man as ever threw a rope or upheld
+the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the Union. But
+he--'
+
+"The judge hits his table with a wooden hammer and asks who I am.
+
+"Bud Oakley,' says I. 'Office deputy of the sheriff's office of Mojada
+County, Texas. Representing,' says I, 'the Law. Luke Summers,' I
+goes on, 'represents Order. And if Your Honor will give me about ten
+minutes in private talk, I'll explain the whole thing to you, and show
+you the equitable and legal requisition papers which I carry in my
+pocket.'
+
+"The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in
+his private room. In there I put the whole thing up to him in such
+language as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces the
+verdict that the young man is delivered into the hands of the Texas
+authorities; and calls the next case.
+
+"Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, I'll tell you
+how the thing wound up in Bildad.
+
+"When we got the prisoner in the sheriff's office, I says to Luke:
+
+"'You, remember that kid of yours--that two-year old that they stole
+away from you when the bust-up come?'
+
+"Luke looks black and angry. He'd never let anybody talk to him about
+that business, and he never mentioned it himself.
+
+"'Toe the mark,' says I. 'Do you remember when he was toddling around
+on the porch and fell down on a pair of Mexican spurs and cut four
+little holes over his right eye? Look at the prisoner,' says I, 'look
+at his nose and the shape of his head and--why, you old fool, don't
+you know your own son?--I knew him,' says I, 'when he perforated Mr.
+Johnson at the depot.'
+
+"Luke comes over to me shaking all over. I never saw him lose his
+nerve before.
+
+"'Bud,' says he. 'I've never had that boy out of my mind one day or
+one night since he was took away. But I never let on. But can we hold
+him?-- Can we make him stay?-- I'll make the best man of him that ever
+put his foot in a stirrup. Wait a minute,' says he, all excited and
+out of his mind--'I've got some-thing here in my desk--I reckon it'll
+hold legal yet--I've looked at it a thousand times--"Cus-to-dy of the
+child,"' says Luke--'"Cus-to-dy of the child." We can hold him on
+that, can't we? Le'me see if I can find that decree.'
+
+"Luke begins to tear his desk to pieces.
+
+"'Hold on,' says I. 'You are Order and I'm Law. You needn't look for
+that paper, Luke. It ain't a decree any more. It's requisition papers.
+It's on file in that Magistrate's office in New York. I took it along
+when we went, because I was office deputy and knew the law.'
+
+"'I've got him back,' says Luke. 'He's mine again. I never thought--'
+
+"'Wait a minute,' says I. 'We've got to have law and order. You and me
+have got to preserve 'em both in Mojada County according to our oath
+and conscience. The kid shot Pedro Johnson, one of Bildad's most
+prominent and--'
+
+"'Oh, hell!' says Luke. 'That don't amount to anything. That fellow
+was half Mexican, anyhow.'"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY
+
+
+In behalf of Sir Walter's soothing plant let us look into the case of
+Martin Burney.
+
+They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the Harlem
+River. The grub-boat of Dennis Corrigan, sub-contractor, was moored
+to a tree on the bank. Twenty-two men belonging to the little green
+island toiled there at the sinew-cracking labour. One among them, who
+wrought in the kitchen of the grub-boat was of the race of the Goths.
+Over them all stood the exorbitant Corrigan, harrying them like the
+captain of a galley crew. He paid them so little that most of the
+gang, work as they might, earned little more than food and tobacco;
+many of them were in debt to him. Corrigan boarded them all in the
+grub-boat, and gave them good grub, for he got it back in work.
+
+Martin Burney was furthest behind of all. He was a little man, all
+muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too
+light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam
+shovel.
+
+The work was hard. Besides that, the banks of the river were humming
+with mosquitoes. As a child in a dark room fixes his regard on the
+pale light of a comforting window, these toilers watched the sun that
+brought around the one hour of the day that tasted less bitter. After
+the sundown supper they would huddle together on the river bank, and
+send the mosquitoes whining and eddying back from the malignant puffs
+of twenty-three reeking pipes. Thus socially banded against the foe,
+they wrenched out of the hour a few well-smoked drops from the cup of
+joy.
+
+Each week Burney grew deeper in debt. Corrigan kept a small stock of
+goods on the boat, which he sold to the men at prices that brought
+him no loss. Burney was a good customer at the tobacco counter. One
+sack when he went to work in the morning and one when he came in at
+night, so much was his account swelled daily. Burney was something
+of a smoker. Yet it was not true that he ate his meals with a pipe
+in his mouth, which had been said of him. The little man was not
+discontented. He had plenty to eat, plenty of tobacco, and a tyrant
+to curse; so why should not he, an Irishman, be well satisfied?
+
+One morning as he was starting with the others for work he stopped at
+the pine counter for his usual sack of tobacco.
+
+"There's no more for ye," said Corrigan. "Your account's closed. Ye
+are a losing investment. No, not even tobaccy, my son. No more tobaccy
+on account. If ye want to work on and eat, do so, but the smoke of ye
+has all ascended. 'Tis my advice that ye hunt a new job."
+
+"I have no tobaccy to smoke in my pipe this day, Mr. Corrigan," said
+Burney, not quite understanding that such a thing could happen to him.
+
+"Earn it," said Corrigan, "and then buy it."
+
+Burney stayed on. He knew of no other job. At first he did not realize
+that tobacco had got to be his father and mother, his confessor and
+sweetheart, and wife and child.
+
+For three days he managed to fill his pipe from the other men's sacks,
+and then they shut him off, one and all. They told him, rough but
+friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest
+forthcoming to a fellow-man desiring it, but that beyond the immediate
+temporary need requisition upon the store of a comrade is pressed with
+great danger to friendship.
+
+Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney.
+Sucking the corpse of his deceased dudheen, he staggered through his
+duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first
+time that the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men bereft of a
+pleasure might have recourse to other delights, but Burney had only
+two comforts in life. One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope
+that there would be no Speedways to build on the other side of Jordan.
+
+At meal times he would let the other men go first into the grub-boat,
+and then he would go down on his hands and knees, grovelling fiercely
+upon the ground where they had been sitting, trying to find some stray
+crumbs of tobacco. Once he sneaked down the river bank and filled his
+pipe with dead willow leaves. At the first whiff of the smoke he spat
+in the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he knew on
+Corrigan--one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and
+ended with the Corrigans that shall hear the trumpet of Gabriel blow.
+He began to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul. Even
+murder occurred to him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went
+without the taste of tobacco--he who had smoked all day and thought
+the night misspent in which he had not awakened for a pipeful or two
+under the bedclothes.
+
+One day a man stopped at the boat to say that there was work to be had
+in the Bronx Park, where a large number of labourers were required in
+making some improvements.
+
+After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away from
+the maddening smell of the others' pipes. He sat down upon a stone. He
+was thinking he would set out for the Bronx. At least he could earn
+tobacco there. What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man's
+work was worth his keep. But then he hated to go without getting even
+with the hard-hearted screw who had put his pipe out. Was there any
+way to do it?
+
+Softly stepping among the clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths,
+who worked in the kitchen. He grinned at Burney's elbow, and that
+unhappy man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt,
+growled at him: "What d'ye want, ye--<DW55>?"
+
+Tony also contained a grievance--and a plot. He, too, was a Corrigan
+hater, and had been primed to see it in others.
+
+"How you like-a Mr. Corrigan?" he asked. "You think-a him a nice-a
+man?"
+
+"To hell with 'm," he said. "May his liver turn to water, and the
+bones of him crack in the cold of his heart. May dog fennel grow upon
+his ancestors' graves, and the grandsons of his children be born
+without eyes. May whiskey turn to clabber in his mouth, and every time
+he sneezes may he blister the soles of his feet. And the smoke of his
+pipe--may it make his eyes water, and the drops fall on the grass that
+his cows eat and poison the butter that he spreads on his bread."
+
+Though Tony remained a stranger to the beauties of this imagery, he
+gathered from it the conviction that it was sufficiently anti-Corrigan
+in its tendency. So, with the confidence of a fellow-conspirator, he
+sat by Burney upon the stone and unfolded his plot.
+
+It was very simple in design. Every day after dinner it was Corrigan's
+habit to sleep for an hour in his bunk. At such times it was the duty
+of the cook and his helper, Tony, to leave the boat so that no noise
+might disturb the autocrat. The cook always spent this hour in walking
+exercise. Tony's plan was this: After Corrigan should be asleep he
+(Tony) and Burney would cut the mooring ropes that held the boat
+to the shore. Tony lacked the nerve to do the deed alone. Then the
+awkward boat would swing out into a swift current and surely overturn
+against a rock there was below.
+
+"Come on and do it," said Burney. "If the back of ye aches from the
+lick he gave ye as the pit of me stomach does for the taste of a bit
+of smoke, we can't cut the ropes too quick."
+
+"All a-right," said Tony. "But better wait 'bout-a ten minute more.
+Give-a Corrigan plenty time get good-a sleep."
+
+They waited, sitting upon the stone. The rest of the men were at work
+out of sight around a bend in the road. Everything would have gone
+well--except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to
+decorate the plot with its conventional accompaniment. He was of
+dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined the appendage to
+villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage. He pulled from his
+shirt bosom a long, black, beautiful, venomous cigar, and handed it to
+Burney.
+
+"You like-a smoke while we wait?" he asked.
+
+Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a
+rat. He laid it to his lips like a long-lost sweetheart. When the
+smoke began to draw he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his
+gray-red moustache curled down over the cigar like the talons of an
+eagle. Slowly the red faded from the whites of his eyes. He fixed his
+gaze dreamily upon the hills across the river. The minutes came and
+went.
+
+"'Bout time to go now," said Tony. "That damn-a Corrigan he be in the
+reever very quick."
+
+Burney started out of his trance with a grunt. He turned his head and
+gazed with a surprised and pained severity at his accomplice. He took
+the cigar partly from his mouth, but sucked it back again immediately,
+chewed it lovingly once or twice, and spoke, in virulent puffs, from
+the corner of his mouth:
+
+"What is it, ye yaller haythen? Would ye lay contrivances against the
+enlightened races of the earth, ye instigator of illegal crimes? Would
+ye seek to persuade Martin Burney into the dirty tricks of an indecent
+<DW55>? Would ye be for murderin' your benefactor, the good man that
+gives ye food and work? Take that, ye punkin- assassin!"
+
+The torrent of Burney's indignation carried with it bodily assault.
+The toe of his shoe sent the would-be cutter of ropes tumbling from
+his seat.
+
+Tony arose and fled. His vendetta he again relegated to the files of
+things that might have been. Beyond the boat he fled and away-away; he
+was afraid to remain.
+
+Burney, with expanded chest, watched his late co-plotter disappear.
+Then he, too, departed, setting his face in the direction of the
+Bronx.
+
+In his wake was a rank and pernicious trail of noisome smoke that
+brought peace to his heart and drove the birds from the roadside into
+the deepest thickets.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE CALIPH AND THE CAD
+
+
+Surely there is no pastime more diverting than that of mingling,
+incognito, with persons of wealth and station. Where else but in those
+circles can one see life in its primitive, crude state unhampered by
+the conventions that bind the dwellers in a lower sphere?
+
+There was a certain Caliph of Bagdad who was accustomed to go down
+among the poor and lowly for the solace obtained from the relation
+of their tales and histories. Is it not strange that the humble and
+poverty-stricken have not availed themselves of the pleasure they
+might glean by donning diamonds and silks and playing Caliph among
+the haunts of the upper world?
+
+There was one who saw the possibilities of thus turning the tables on
+Haroun al Raschid. His name was Corny Brannigan, and he was a truck
+driver for a Canal Street importing firm. And if you read further
+you will learn how he turned upper Broadway into Bagdad and learned
+something about himself that he did not know before.
+
+Many people would have called Corny a snob--preferably by means of
+a telephone. His chief interest in life, his chosen amusement, and
+his sole diversion after working hours, was to place himself in
+juxtaposition--since he could not hope to mingle--with people of
+fashion and means.
+
+Every evening after Corny had put up his team and dined at a
+lunch-counter that made immediateness a specialty, he would clothe
+himself in evening raiment as correct as any you will see in the palm
+rooms. Then he would betake himself to that ravishing, radiant roadway
+devoted to Thespis, Thais, and Bacchus.
+
+For a time he would stroll about the lobbies of the best hotels, his
+soul steeped in blissful content. Beautiful women, cooing like doves,
+but feathered like birds of Paradise, flicked him with their robes as
+they passed. Courtly gentlemen attended them, gallant and assiduous.
+And Corny's heart within him swelled like Sir Lancelot's, for the
+mirror spoke to him as he passed and said: "Corny, lad, there's not
+a guy among 'em that looks a bit the sweller than yerself. And you
+drivin' of a truck and them swearin' off their taxes and playin' the
+red in art galleries with the best in the land!"
+
+And the mirrors spake the truth. Mr. Corny Brannigan had acquired the
+outward polish, if nothing more. Long and keen observation of polite
+society had gained for him its manner, its genteel air, and--most
+difficult of acquirement--its repose and ease.
+
+Now and then in the hotels Corny had managed conversation and
+temporary acquaintance with substantial, if not distinguished, guests.
+With many of these he had exchanged cards, and the ones he received he
+carefully treasured for his own use later. Leaving the hotel lobbies,
+Corny would stroll leisurely about, lingering at the theatre entrance,
+dropping into the fashionable restaurants as if seeking some friend.
+He rarely patronized any of these places; he was no bee come to suck
+honey, but a butterfly flashing his wings among the flowers whose
+calyces held no sweets for him. His wages were not large enough to
+furnish him with more than the outside garb of the gentleman. To have
+been one of the beings he so cunningly imitated, Corny Brannigan would
+have given his right hand.
+
+One night Corny had an adventure. After absorbing the delights of an
+hour's lounging in the principal hotels along Broadway, he passed up
+into the stronghold of Thespis. Cab drivers hailed him as a likely
+fare, to his prideful content. Languishing eyes were turned upon him
+as a hopeful source of lobsters and the delectable, ascendant globules
+of effervescence. These overtures and unconscious compliments Corny
+swallowed as manna, and hoped Bill, the off horse, would be less lame
+in the left forefoot in the morning.
+
+Beneath a cluster of milky globes of electric light Corny paused to
+admire the sheen of his low-cut patent leather shoes. The building
+occupying the angle was a pretentious _cafe_. Out of this came a
+couple, a lady in a white, cobwebby evening gown, with a lace wrap
+like a wreath of mist thrown over it, and a man, tall, faultless,
+assured--too assured. They moved to the edge of the sidewalk and
+halted. Corny's eye, ever alert for "pointers" in "swell" behaviour,
+took them in with a sidelong glance.
+
+"The carriage is not here," said the lady. "You ordered it to wait?"
+
+"I ordered it for nine-thirty," said the man. "It should be here now."
+
+A familiar note in the lady's voice drew a more especial attention
+from Corny. It was pitched in a key well known to him. The soft
+electric shone upon her face. Sisters of sorrow have no quarters fixed
+for them. In the index to the book of breaking hearts you will find
+that Broadway follows very soon after the Bowery. This lady's face was
+sad, and her voice was attuned with it. They waited, as if for the
+carriage. Corny waited too, for it was out of doors, and he was never
+tired of accumulating and profiting by knowledge of gentlemanly
+conduct.
+
+"Jack," said the lady, "don't be angry. I've done everything I could
+to please you this evening. Why do you act so?"
+
+"Oh, you're an angel," said the man. "Depend upon woman to throw the
+blame upon a man."
+
+"I'm not blaming you. I'm only trying to make you happy."
+
+"You go about it in a very peculiar way."
+
+"You have been cross with me all the evening without any cause."
+
+"Oh, there isn't any cause except--you make me tired."
+
+Corny took out his card case and looked over his collection. He
+selected one that read: "Mr. R. Lionel Whyte-Melville, Bloomsbury
+Square, London." This card he had inveigled from a tourist at the King
+Edward Hotel. Corny stepped up to the man and presented it with a
+correctly formal air.
+
+"May I ask why I am selected for the honour?" asked the lady's escort.
+
+Now, Mr. Corny Brannigan had a very wise habit of saying little
+during his imitations of the Caliph of Bagdad. The advice of Lord
+Chesterfield: "Wear a black coat and hold your tongue," he believed in
+without having heard. But now speech was demanded and required of him.
+
+"No gent," said Corny, "would talk to a lady like you done. Fie upon
+you, Willie! Even if she happens to be your wife you ought to have
+more respect for your clothes than to chin her back that way. Maybe it
+ain't my butt-in, but it goes, anyhow--you strike me as bein' a whole
+lot to the wrong."
+
+The lady's escort indulged in more elegantly expressed but fetching
+repartee. Corny, eschewing his truck driver's vocabulary, retorted as
+nearly as he could in polite phrases. Then diplomatic relations were
+severed; there was a brief but lively set-to with other than oral
+weapons, from which Corny came forth easily victor.
+
+A carriage dashed up, driven by a tardy and solicitous coachman.
+
+"Will you kindly open the door for me?" asked the lady. Corny assisted
+her to enter, and took off his hat. The escort was beginning to
+scramble up from the sidewalk.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Corny, "if he's your man."
+
+"He's no man of mine," said the lady. "Perhaps he--but there's no
+chance of his being now. Drive home, Michael. If you care to take
+this--with my thanks."
+
+Three red roses were thrust out through the carriage window into
+Corny's hand. He took them, and the hand for an instant; and then the
+carriage sped away.
+
+Corny gathered his foe's hat and began to brush the dust from his
+clothes.
+
+"Come along," said Corny, taking the other man by the arm.
+
+His late opponent was yet a little dazed by the hard knocks he had
+received. Corny led him carefully into a saloon three doors away.
+
+"The drinks for us," said Corny, "me and my friend."
+
+"You're a queer feller," said the lady's late escort--"lick a man and
+then want to set 'em up."
+
+"You're my best friend," said Corny exultantly. "You don't understand?
+Well, listen. You just put me wise to somethin'. I been playin' gent a
+long time, thinkin' it was just the glad rags I had and nothin' else.
+Say--you're a swell, ain't you? Well, you trot in that class, I guess.
+I don't; but I found out one thing--I'm a gentleman, by--and I know it
+now. What'll you have to drink?"
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE DIAMOND OF KALI
+
+
+The original news item concerning the diamond of the goddess Kali was
+handed in to the city editor. He smiled and held it for a moment above
+the wastebasket. Then he laid it back on his desk and said: "Try the
+Sunday people; they might work something out of it."
+
+The Sunday editor glanced the item over and said: "H'm!" Afterward he
+sent for a reporter and expanded his comment.
+
+"You might see General Ludlow," he said, "and make a story out of this
+if you can. Diamond stories are a drug; but this one is big enough
+to be found by a scrubwoman wrapped up in a piece of newspaper and
+tucked under the corner of the hall linoleum. Find out first if
+the General has a daughter who intends to go on the stage. If not,
+you can go ahead with the story. Run cuts of the Kohinoor and J. P.
+Morgan's collection, and work in pictures of the Kimberley mines and
+Barney Barnato. Fill in with a tabulated comparison of the values of
+diamonds, radium, and veal cutlets since the meat strike; and let it
+run to a half page."
+
+On the following day the reporter turned in his story. The Sunday
+editor let his eye sprint along its lines. "H'm!" he said again. This
+time the copy went into the waste-basket with scarcely a flutter.
+
+The reporter stiffened a little around the lips; but he was whistling
+softly and contentedly between his teeth when I went over to talk with
+him about it an hour later.
+
+"I don't blame the 'old man'," said he, magnanimously, "for cutting it
+out. It did sound like funny business; but it happened exactly as I
+wrote it. Say, why don't you fish that story out of the w.-b. and use
+it? Seems to me it's as good as the tommyrot you write."
+
+I accepted the tip, and if you read further you will learn the facts
+about the diamond of the goddess Kali as vouched for by one of the
+most reliable reporters on the staff.
+
+Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow lives in one of those decaying but
+venerated old red-brick mansions in the West Twenties. The General
+is a member of an old New York family that does not advertise. He is
+a globe-trotter by birth, a gentleman by predilection, a millionaire
+by the mercy of Heaven, and a connoisseur of precious stones by
+occupation.
+
+The reporter was admitted promptly when he made himself known at the
+General's residence at about eight thirty on the evening that he
+received the assignment. In the magnificent library he was greeted by
+the distinguished traveller and connoisseur, a tall, erect gentleman
+in the early fifties, with a nearly white moustache, and a bearing so
+soldierly that one perceived in him scarcely a trace of the National
+Guardsman. His weather-beaten countenance lit up with a charming smile
+of interest when the reporter made known his errand.
+
+"Ah, you have heard of my latest find. I shall be glad to show you
+what I conceive to be one of the six most valuable blue diamonds in
+existence."
+
+The General opened a small safe in a corner of the library and brought
+forth a plush-covered box. Opening this, he exposed to the reporter's
+bewildered gaze a huge and brilliant diamond--nearly as large as a
+hailstone.
+
+"This stone," said the General, "is something more than a mere jewel.
+It once formed the central eye of the three-eyed goddess Kali, who is
+worshipped by one of the fiercest and most fanatical tribes of India.
+If you will arrange yourself comfortably I will give you a brief
+history of it for your paper."
+
+General Ludlow brought a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a
+cabinet, and set a comfortable armchair for the lucky scribe.
+
+"The Phansigars, or Thugs, of India," began the General, "are the
+most dangerous and dreaded of the tribes of North India. They are
+extremists in religion, and worship the horrid goddess Kali in the
+form of images. Their rites are interesting and bloody. The robbing
+and murdering of travellers are taught as a worthy and obligatory
+deed by their strange religious code. Their worship of the three-eyed
+goddess Kali is conducted so secretly that no traveller has ever
+heretofore had the honour of witnessing the ceremonies. That
+distinction was reserved for myself.
+
+"While at Sakaranpur, between Delhi and Khelat, I used to explore the
+jungle in every direction in the hope of learning something new about
+these mysterious Phansigars.
+
+"One evening at twilight I was making my way through a teakwood
+forest, when I came upon a deep circular depression in an open space,
+in the centre of which was a rude stone temple. I was sure that this
+was one of the temples of the Thugs, so I concealed myself in the
+undergrowth to watch.
+
+"When the moon rose the depression in the clearing was suddenly filled
+with hundreds of shadowy, swiftly gliding forms. Then a door opened in
+the temple, exposing a brightly illuminated image of the goddess Kali,
+before which a white-robed priest began a barbarous incantation, while
+the tribe of worshippers prostrated themselves upon the earth.
+
+"But what interested me most was the central eye of the huge wooden
+idol. I could see by its flashing brilliancy that it was an immense
+diamond of the purest water.
+
+"After the rites were concluded the Thugs slipped away into the forest
+as silently as they had come. The priest stood for a few minutes in
+the door of the temple enjoying the cool of the night before closing
+his rather warm quarters. Suddenly a dark, lithe shadow slipped down
+into the hollow, leaped upon the priest; and struck him down with a
+glittering knife. Then the murderer sprang at the image of the goddess
+like a cat and pried out the glowing central eye of Kali with his
+weapon. Straight toward me he ran with his royal prize. When he was
+within two paces I rose to my feet and struck him with all my force
+between the eyes. He rolled over senseless and the magnificent jewel
+fell from his hand. That is the splendid blue diamond you have just
+seen--a stone worthy of a monarch's crown."
+
+"That's a corking story," said the reporter. "That decanter is exactly
+like the one that John W. Gates always sets out during an interview."
+
+"Pardon me," said General Ludlow, "for forgetting hospitality in the
+excitement of my narrative. Help yourself."
+
+"Here's looking at you," said the reporter.
+
+"What I am afraid of now," said the General, lowering his voice, "is
+that I may be robbed of the diamond. The jewel that formed an eye of
+their goddess is their most sacred symbol. Somehow the tribe suspected
+me of having it; and members of the band have followed me half around
+the earth. They are the most cunning and cruel fanatics in the
+world, and their religious vows would compel them to assassinate the
+unbeliever who has desecrated their sacred treasure.
+
+"Once in Lucknow three of their agents, disguised as servants in a
+hotel, endeavoured to strangle me with a twisted cloth. Again, in
+London, two Thugs, made up as street musicians, climbed into my window
+at night and attacked me. They have even tracked me to this country.
+My life is never safe. A month ago, while I was at a hotel in the
+Berkshires, three of them sprang upon me from the roadside weeds. I
+saved myself then by my knowledge of their customs."
+
+"How was that, General?" asked the reporter.
+
+"There was a cow grazing near by," said General Ludlow, "a gentle
+Jersey cow. I ran to her side and stood. The three Thugs ceased their
+attack, knelt and struck the ground thrice with their foreheads. Then,
+after many respectful salaams, they departed."
+
+"Afraid the cow would hook?" asked the reporter.
+
+"No; the cow is a sacred animal to the Phansigars. Next to their
+goddess they worship the cow. They have never been known to commit any
+deed of violence in the presence of the animal they reverence."
+
+"It's a mighty interesting story," said the reporter. "If you don't
+mind I'll take another drink, and then a few notes."
+
+"I will join you," said General Ludlow, with a courteous wave of his
+hand.
+
+"If I were you," advised the reporter, "I'd take that sparkler to
+Texas. Get on a cow ranch there, and the Pharisees--"
+
+"Phansigars," corrected the General.
+
+"Oh, yes; the fancy guys would run up against a long horn every time
+they made a break."
+
+General Ludlow closed the diamond case and thrust it into his bosom.
+
+"The spies of the tribe have found me out in New York," he said,
+straightening his tall figure. "I'm familiar with the East Indian cast
+of countenance, and I know that my every movement is watched. They
+will undoubtedly attempt to rob and murder me here."
+
+"Here?" exclaimed the reporter, seizing the decanter and pouring out a
+liberal amount of its contents.
+
+"At any moment," said the General. "But as a soldier and a connoisseur
+I shall sell my life and my diamond as dearly as I can."
+
+At this point of the reporter's story there is a certain vagueness,
+but it can be gathered that there was a loud crashing noise at the
+rear of the house they were in. General Ludlow buttoned his coat
+closely and sprang for the door. But the reporter clutched him firmly
+with one hand, while he held the decanter with the other.
+
+"Tell me before we fly," he urged, in a voice thick with some inward
+turmoil, "do any of your daughters contemplate going on the stage?"
+
+"I have no daughters--fly for your life--the Phansigars are upon us!"
+cried the General.
+
+The two men dashed out of the front door of the house.
+
+The hour was late. As their feet struck the side-walk strange men of
+dark and forbidding appearance seemed to rise up out of the earth and
+encompass them. One with Asiatic features pressed close to the General
+and droned in a terrible voice:
+
+"Buy cast clo'!"
+
+Another, dark-whiskered and sinister, sped lithely to his side and
+began in a whining voice:
+
+"Say, mister, have yer got a dime fer a poor feller what--"
+
+They hurried on, but only into the arms of a black-eyed, dusky-browed
+being, who held out his hat under their noses, while a confederate of
+Oriental hue turned the handle of a street organ near by.
+
+Twenty steps farther on General Ludlow and the reporter found
+themselves in the midst of half a dozen villainous-looking men with
+high-turned coat collars and faces bristling with unshaven beards.
+
+"Run for it!" hissed the General. "They have discovered the possessor
+of the diamond of the goddess Kali."
+
+The two men took to their heels. The avengers of the goddess pursued.
+
+"Oh, Lordy!" groaned the reporter, "there isn't a cow this side of
+Brooklyn. We're lost!"
+
+When near the corner they both fell over an iron object that rose from
+the sidewalk close to the gutter. Clinging to it desperately, they
+awaited their fate.
+
+"If I only had a cow!" moaned the reporter--"or another nip from that
+decanter, General!"
+
+As soon as the pursuers observed where their victims had found refuge
+they suddenly fell back and retreated to a considerable distance.
+
+"They are waiting for reinforcements in order to attack us," said
+General Ludlow.
+
+But the reporter emitted a ringing laugh, and hurled his hat
+triumphantly into the air.
+
+"Guess again," he shouted, and leaned heavily upon the iron object.
+"Your old fancy guys or thugs, whatever you call 'em, are up to date.
+Dear General, this is a pump we've stranded upon--same as a cow in New
+York (hic!) see? Thas'h why the 'nfuriated smoked guys don't attack
+us--see? Sacred an'mal, the pump in N' York, my dear General!"
+
+But further down in the shadows of Twenty-eighth Street the marauders
+were holding a parley.
+
+"Come on, Reddy," said one. "Let's go frisk the old 'un. He's been
+showin' a sparkler as big as a hen egg all around Eighth Avenue for
+two weeks past."
+
+"Not on your silhouette," decided Reddy. "You see 'em rallyin' round
+The Pump? They're friends of Bill's. Bill won't stand for nothin' of
+this kind in his district since he got that bid to Esopus."
+
+This exhausts the facts concerning the Kali diamond. But it is deemed
+not inconsequent to close with the following brief (paid) item that
+appeared two days later in a morning paper.
+
+"It is rumored that a niece of Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow, of New York
+City, will appear on the stage next season.
+
+"Her diamonds are said to be extremely valuable and of much historic
+interest."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
+
+
+"In the tropics" ("Hop-along" Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to
+me) "the seasons, months, fortnights, week-ends, holidays, dog-days,
+Sundays, and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle that
+you never know when a year has gone by until you're in the middle of
+the next one."
+
+"Hop-along" Bibb kept his bird store on lower Fourth Avenue. He was an
+ex-seaman and beachcomber who made regular voyages to southern ports
+and imported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots and
+dialectic paroquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone
+to him to buy a parrot to present, at Christmas, to my Aunt Joanna.
+
+"This one," said I, disregarding his homily on the subdivisions of
+time--"this one that seems all red, white, and blue--to what genus of
+beasts does he belong? He appeals at once to my patriotism and to my
+love of discord in colour schemes."
+
+"That's a cockatoo from Ecuador," said Bibb. "All he has been taught
+to say is 'Merry Christmas.' A seasonable bird. He's only seven
+dollars; and I'll bet many a human has stuck you for more money by
+making the same speech to you."
+
+And then Bibb laughed suddenly and loudly.
+
+"That bird," he explained, "reminds me. He's got his dates mixed.
+He ought to be saying '_E pluribus unum_,' to match his feathers,
+instead of trying to work the Santa Claus graft. It reminds me of the
+time me and Liverpool Sam got our ideas of things tangled up on the
+coast of Costa Rica on account of the weather and other phenomena to
+be met with in the tropics.
+
+"We were, as it were, stranded on that section of the Spanish main
+with no money to speak of and no friends that should be talked about
+either. We had stoked and second-cooked ourselves down there on a
+fruit steamer from New Orleans to try our luck, which was discharged,
+after we got there, for lack of evidence. There was no work suitable
+to our instincts; so me and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum
+of the country and such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown.
+It was an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was no harbour
+or future or recourse. Between steamers the town slept and drank rum.
+It only woke up when there were bananas to ship. It was like a man
+sleeping through dinner until the dessert.
+
+"When me and Liverpool got so low down that the American consul
+wouldn't speak to us we knew we'd struck bed rock.
+
+"We boarded with a snuff-brown lady named Chica, who kept a rum-shop
+and a ladies' and gents' restaurant in a street called the _calle
+de los_ Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints. When our credit played
+out there, Liverpool, whose stomach overshadowed his sensations of
+_noblesse oblige_, married Chica. This kept us in rice and fried
+plantain for a month; and then Chica pounded Liverpool one morning
+sadly and earnestly for fifteen minutes with a casserole handed down
+from the stone age, and we knew that we had out-welcomed our liver.
+That night we signed an engagement with Don Jaime McSpinosa, a hybrid
+banana fancier of the place, to work on his fruit preserves nine miles
+out of town. We had to do it or be reduced to sea water and broken
+doses of feed and slumber.
+
+"Now, speaking of Liverpool Sam, I don't malign or inexculpate him
+to you any more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an
+Englishman gets as low as he can he's got to dodge so that the dregs
+of other nations don't drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And
+if he's a Liverpool Englishman, why, fire-damp is what he's got to
+look out for. Being a natural American, that's my personal view. But
+Liverpool and me had much in common. We were without decorous clothes
+or ways and means of existence; and, as the saying goes, misery
+certainly does enjoy the society of accomplices.
+
+"Our job on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks
+and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native
+dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA
+sheeting pajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles 'em up on the
+beach.
+
+"You ever been in a banana grove? It's as solemn as a rathskeller at
+seven A. M. It's like being lost behind the scenes at one of these
+mushroom musical shows. You can't see the sky for the foliage above
+you; and the ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it's so still
+that you can hear the stalks growing again after you chop 'em down.
+
+"At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge
+of a lagoon with the red, yellow, and black employes of Don Jaime.
+There we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys
+squalling and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon
+until daylight with only snatches of sleep between times.
+
+"We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It's just
+about eighty degrees there in December and June and on Fridays and at
+midnight and election day and any other old time. Sometimes it rains
+more than at others, and that's all the difference you notice. A
+man is liable to live along there without noticing any fugiting of
+tempus until some day the undertaker calls in for him just when he's
+beginning to think about cutting out the gang and saving up a little
+to invest in real estate.
+
+"I don't know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through two
+or three rainy spells, eight or ten hair cuts, and the life of three
+pairs of sail-cloth trousers. All the money we earned went for rum and
+tobacco; but we ate, and that was something.
+
+"All of a sudden one day me and Liverpool find the trade of committing
+surgical operations on banana stalks turning to aloes and quinine in
+our mouths. It's a seizure that often comes upon white men in Latin
+and geographical countries. We wanted to be addressed again in
+language and see the smoke of a steamer and read the real estate
+transfers and gents' outfitting ads in an old newspaper. Even Soledad
+seemed like a centre of civilization to us, so that evening we put
+our thumbs on our nose at Don Jaime's fruit stand and shook his grass
+burrs off our feet.
+
+"It was only twelve miles to Soledad, but it took me and Liverpool two
+days to get there. It was banana grove nearly all the way; and we got
+twisted time and again. It was like paging the palm room of a New York
+hotel for a man named Smith.
+
+"When we saw the houses of Soledad between the trees all my
+disinclination toward this Liverpool Sam rose up in me. I stood him
+while we were two white men against the banana brindles; but now, when
+there were prospects of my exchanging even cuss words with an American
+citizen, I put him back in his proper place. And he was a sight, too,
+with his rum-painted nose and his red whiskers and elephant feet with
+leather sandals strapped to them. I suppose I looked about the same.
+
+"'It looks to me,' says I, 'like Great Britain ought to be made to
+keep such gin-swilling, scurvy, unbecoming mud larks as you at home
+instead of sending 'em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands.
+We kicked you out of America once and we ought to put on rubber boots
+and do it again.'
+
+"'Oh, you go to 'ell,' says Liverpool, which was about all the
+repartee he ever had.
+
+"Well, Soledad, looked fine to me after Don Jaime 's plantation.
+Liverpool and me walked into it side by side, from force of habit,
+past the calabosa and the Hotel Grande, down across the plaza toward
+Chica's hut, where we hoped that Liverpool, being a husband of hers,
+might work his luck for a meal.
+
+"As we passed the two-story little frame house occupied by the
+American Club, we noticed that the balcony had been decorated all
+around with wreaths of evergreens and flowers, and the flag was
+flying from the pole on the roof. Stanzey, the consul, and Arkright,
+a gold-mine owner, were smoking on the balcony. Me and Liverpool
+waved our dirty hands toward 'em and smiled real society smiles; but
+they turned their backs to us and went on talking. And we had played
+whist once with the two of 'em up to the time when Liverpool held all
+thirteen trumps for four hands in succession. It was some holiday, we
+knew; but we didn't know the day nor the year.
+
+"A little further along we saw a reverend man named Pendergast, who
+had come to Soledad to build a church, standing under a cocoanut palm
+with his little black alpaca coat and green umbrella.
+
+"'Boys, boys!' says he, through his blue spectacles, 'is it as bad as
+this? Are you so far reduced?'
+
+"'We're reduced,' says I, 'to very vulgar fractions.'
+
+"'It is indeed sad,' says Pendergast, 'to see my countrymen in such
+circumstances.'
+
+"'Cut 'arf of that out, old party,' says Liverpool. 'Cawn't you tell
+a member of the British upper classes when you see one?'
+
+"'Shut up,' I told Liverpool. 'You're on foreign soil now, or that
+portion of it that's not on you.'
+
+"'And on this day, too!' goes on Pendergast, grievous--'on this most
+glorious day of the year when we should all be celebrating the dawn of
+Christian civilization and the downfall of the wicked.'
+
+"'I did notice bunting and bouquets decorating the town, reverend,'
+says I, 'but I didn't know what it was for. We've been so long out of
+touch with calendars that we didn't know whether it was summer time or
+Saturday afternoon.'
+
+"'Here is two dollars,' says Pendergast digging up two Chili silver
+wheels and handing 'em to me. 'Go, my men, and observe the rest of the
+day in a befitting manner.'
+
+"Me and Liverpool thanked him kindly, and walked away.
+
+"'Shall we eat?' I asks.
+
+"'Oh, 'ell!' says Liverpool. 'What's money for?'
+
+"'Very well, then,' I says, 'since you insist upon it, we'll drink.'
+
+"So we pull up in a rum shop and get a quart of it and go down on the
+beach under a cocoanut tree and celebrate.
+
+"Not having eaten anything but oranges in two days, the rum has
+immediate effect; and once more I conjure up great repugnance toward
+the British nation.
+
+"'Stand up here,' I says to Liverpool, 'you scum of a despot limited
+monarchy, and have another dose of Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr.
+Pendergast,' says I, 'said we were to observe the day in a befitting
+manner, and I'm not going to see his money misapplied.'
+
+"'Oh, you go to 'ell!' says Liverpool, and I started in with a fine
+left-hander on his right eye.
+
+"Liverpool had been a fighter once, but dissipation and bad company
+had taken the nerve out of him. In ten minutes I had him lying on the
+sand waving the white flag.
+
+"'Get up,' says I, kicking him in the ribs, 'and come along with me.'
+
+"Liverpool got up and followed behind me because it was his habit,
+wiping the red off his face and nose. I led him to Reverend
+Pendergast's shack and called him out.
+
+"'Look at this, sir,' says I--'look at this thing that was once a
+proud Britisher. You gave us two dollars and told us to celebrate the
+day. The star-spangled banner still waves. Hurrah for the stars and
+eagles!'
+
+"'Dear me,' says Pendergast, holding up his hands. 'Fighting on this
+day of all days! On Christmas day, when peace on--'
+
+"'Christmas, hell!' says I. 'I thought it was the Fourth of July.'"
+
+
+
+"Merry Christmas!" said the red, white, and blue cockatoo.
+
+"Take him for six dollars," said Hop-along Bibb. "He's got his dates
+and colours mixed."
+
+
+
+***
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