1 I ^1 10^ %OJITV3-JO ^-OF-CAIlFOfy^ = 3 % r ~~ s -'J <* 3 THH GIFT OF THE MAOI ., . . . , >. 16 A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE . . . : .... 26 BETWEEN ROUNDS .1 <, >*, 1.1 >. ; .i 36 THE SKYLIGHT ROOM . ,., ,., .* m . . 4-7 A SERVICE OF LOVE . . .. . .1 i., ... 58 THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE . < ,. ... 68 MAW ABOUT TOWN ..... :. : ..: .. . . 81 THH COP AND THE ANTHEM , m . -.. ... 89 AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE . . ..- . . . 100 MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG . . . . . . 109 THH LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN . . 118 MAMMON AND THE ARCHER IM ., ,., .. . . 127 SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE . .., . . . . 139 THE GREEN DOOR . . .. . ,., ,., . . . 150 FROM THE CABBY'S SEAT . ., . > . . . 164 AN UNFINISHED STORY . ., . ., ,. ; : ., .. . 173 THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK ., t.. . . 185 SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE . >.> . . . 196 THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER ., .... ,., . 207 AFTER TWENTY YEARS ........ 214 LOST ON DRESS PARADE . .. . . . * . 221 BY COURIER ............ 232 THK FURNISHED ROOM ...... ,.. . . 239 TH BBIEF DEBUT OF TILDV ., . . *. <*i . 251 THE FOUR MILLION TOBIN'S PALM lOBIN and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her own savings, and one hundred dollars from the sale of Tobin's inherited estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh. 'And since the letter that Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner. Tobin advertised in the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen. So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes and the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom. But Tobin was a hard- headed man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He ground his teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures; and, though he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy, and was for licking the tintype men as they came. THE FOUR MILLION So I gets him down a side way on a board wait where the attractions were some less violent. At a little six by eight stall Tobin halts, with a more human look in his eye, "'Tis here," says he, " I will be diverted. Ill have the palm of me hand investigated by the wonder ful palmist of the Nile, and see if what is to be will be." Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature. He possessed illegal convictions in his mind along the subjects of black cats, lucky numbers, and the weather predictions in the papers. We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed mysterious with red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing 'em like a railroad centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian Palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and beasties embroid ered upon it. Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one of his hands. She lifts Tobin's hand, which is own brother to the hoof of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether 'tis a stone in the frog or a cast shoe he has come for. '* Man," says this Madame Zozo, " the line of your fate shows " **'Tis not me foot at all," says Tobin, interrupt* [4] TOBIN'S PALM ing. " Sure, 'tis no beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand." "The line shows," says the Madame, "that ye've not arrived at your time of life without bad luck. toad there's more to come. The mount of Venus or is that a stone bruise? shows that ye've been in love. There's been trouble in your life on account of your sweetheart." "'Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with," whispers Tobin to me in a loud voice to one side. " I see," says the palmist, " a great deal of sor row and tribulation with one whom ye cannot forget. I see the lines of designation point to the letter K and the letter M in her name." " Whist ! " says Tobin to me ; " do ye hear that? " " Look out," goes on the palmist, " for a dark man and a light woman ; for they'll both bring ye trouble. Ye'll make a voyage upon the water very soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck. There's a man coming into your life who will fetch ye good fortune. Ye'll know him when ye see him by his crooked nose." " Is his name set down? " asks Tobin. " 'Twill be convenient in the way of greeting when he backs up to dump off the good luck." ** His name," says the palmist, thoughtful looking, THE FOUR MILLION " i not spelled out by the lines, but they indicate 'tis a long one, and the letter *o' should be in it. There's no more to tell. Good-evening. Don't block up the door." " 'Tis wonderful how she knows," says Tobin as we walk to the pier. As we squeezed through the gates a nigger man sticks his lighted segar against Tobin's ear, and there is trouble. Tobin hammers his neck, and the women squeal, and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of the way before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when enjoying himself. On the boat going back, when the man calls " Who wants the good-looking waiter? " Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found himself discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and less congenial with his misfortunes than when we started. On a seat against the railing ^s 31 ^twang v>roan dressed suitable for red nutcmobiles, with hair the colour of an unsmoked meerschaum. In passing by, TOBIN'S PALM Tobin lacks her foot without intentions, and, being polite to ladies when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologising. But he knocks it off, and the wind carries it overboard. Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for the man's adversities were be coming frequent. He was apt, when pushed so close by hard luck, to kick the best dressed man he could see, and try to take command of the boat. Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says, excited: " Jawn," says he, "do ye know what we're doing? We're taking a voyage upon the water." " There now," says I ; " subdue yeself . The boat'll land in ten minutes more." " Lqpk," says he, " at the light lady upon the bench. And have ye forgotten the nigger man that burned me ear? And isn't the money I had gone a dollar sixty-five it was ? " I thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to get violent with good excuse, as men will do, and I tried to make him understand such things was trifles. " Listen," says Tobin. " Ye've no ear for the gift of prophecy or the miracles of the inspired. What did the palmist lady tell ye out of me hand? 'Tis coming true before your eyes. ( Look out,' says she, m THE FOUR MILLION ' for a dark man and a light woman ; they'll bring ye trouble.' Have ye forgot the nigger man, though he got some of it back from me fist? Can ye show me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling in the water? And where's the dollar sixty-five I had in me vest when we left the shooting gallery? " The way Tobin put it, it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction, though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to any one at Coney without the implication of palmistry. Tobin got up an^ walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers out of his little red eyes. I asked him the interpretation of his movements. Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to carry it out. " Ye should know," says he, " I'm working out the salvation promised by the lines in me palm. I'm looking for the crooked-nose man that's to bring the good luck. 'Tis all that will save us. Jawn, did ye ever see a straighter-nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life? " 'Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat. On a street corner, standing under a gas-light and [8] PALM looking over the elevated road at the moon, \ras a man. A long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, arid I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the sad dle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him. " Good-night to ye," Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his segar and passes the compliments, sociable. " Would ye hand us your name," asks Tobin, " and let us look at the size of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye." " My name," says the man, polite, " is Frieden- hausman Maximus G. Friedenhausman." "'Tis the right length," says Tobin. "Do you spell it with an ' o ' anywhere down the stretch of it?" " I do not," says the man. "Can ye spell it with an *o'?" inquires Tobin, turning anxious. " If your conscience," says the man with the nose, "is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penulti mate syllable." [9] THE FOUR MILLION ** 'Tis well," says Tobin. " Ye're in the presence of Jawn Malone and Daniel Tobin." " 'Tis highly appreciated," says the man, with a bow. " And now since I cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large? " " By the two signs," answers Tobin, trying to ex plain, " which ye display according to the reading of the Eygptian palmist from the sole of me hand, ye've been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far fulfilled accord ing to Hoyle." The man stopped smoking and looked at me. " Have ye any amendments," he asks, " to offer to that statement, or are ye one too? I thought by the looks of ye ye might have him in charge." " None," says I to him, " except that as one horse shoe resembles another so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me f riendc If not, then the lines of Danny's hand may have been crossed, I don't know." " There's two of ye," says the man with the nose, looking up and down for the sight of a policeman. " I've enjoyed your company immense. Good-night." [10] TOBIN'S PALM With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street, stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close to one side of him and me at the other. " What ! " says he, stopping on the opposite side walk and pushing back his hat; "do ye follow me? I tell ye," he says, very loud, " I'm proud to have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home." " Do," says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. " Do be off to your home. And I will sit at the door of it till ye come out in the morning. For the de pendence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the blonde lady and the financial loss of the one-sixty-five." " *Tis a strange hallucination," says the man, turn ing to me as a more reasonable lunatic. " Hadn't ye better get him home? " " Listen, man," says I to him. " Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever was. Maybe he is a bit de ranged on account of having drink enough to dis turb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than following out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments, which I will explain to you." With that I relates the facts about the palmist lady and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an instrument of good fortune. "Now, THE FOUR MILLION Understand," I concludes, " my position in this riot. I am the friend of me friend Tobin, according to me interpretations. 'Tis easy to be a friend to the pros perous, for it pays ; 'tis not hard to be a friend to the poor, for ye get puffed up by gratitude and have your picture printed standing in front of a tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the art of friendship to be true friend to a born fool. And that's what I'm doing," says I, " for, in my opinion, there's no fortune to be read from the palm of me hand that wasn't printed there with the handle of a pick. And, though ye've got the crookedest nose in New York City, I misdoubt that all the fortune-tellers doing business could milk good luck from ye. But the lines of Danny's hand pointed to ye fair, and I'll assist him to experiment with ye until he's convinced ye're dry." After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing,, He leans against a corner and laughs considerable, Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs of us and takes us by an arm apiece. " 'Tis my mistake," says he. " How could I be expecting anything so fine and wonderful to be turn ing the corner upon me? I came near being found unworthy. Hard by," says he, " is a cafe, snug and suitable for the entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let [12] TOBIN'S PALM us go there and have drink while we discuss the un availability of the categorical." So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars. " Ye must know," says the man of destiny, " that me walk in life is one that is called the literary. I wander abroad be night seeking idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art: the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for, in the business of literature, the conditions are reversed. 'Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange things I have discov ered in life." 1 " Ye will put me in a book," says Tobin, disgusted ; " will ye put me in a book? " " I will not," says the man, " for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet. The best I can do is to enjoy ye meself, for the time is not ripe for destroying the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type. All alone by meself must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye, boys; I am truly "grateful.** THE FOUR MILLION " The talk of ye," says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and pounding the table with his fist, " is an eyesore to me patience. There was good luck prom ised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like the bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I would be thinking the palm of me hand lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady and " " Whist ! " says the long man ; " would ye be led astray by physiognomy? Me nose will do what it can within bounds. Let us have these glasses filled again, for 'tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well mois tened, they being subject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere." So, the man of literature makes good, to my no tion, for he pays, cheerful, for everything, the capi tal of me and Tobin being exhausted by prediction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red showing in his eye. By and by we moved out, for 'twas eleven o'clock, and stands a bit upon the sidewalk. And then the man says he must be going home, and invites me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron fences. The man [14] TOBIN'S PALM stops at one of them and looks up at the top windows which he finds dark. " Tis me humble dwelling," says he, " and I begin to perceive by the signs that me wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a bit in the way of hospitality. 'Tis me wish that ye enter the base ment room, where we dine, and partake of a reason able refreshment. There will be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale. Ye will be welcome to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for diversions." The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the proposition, though 'twas sticking hard in Danny's superstitions to think that a few- drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good fortune promised by the palm of his hand. " Step down the steps," says the man with the crooked nose, " and I will enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have in the kitchen," says he, " to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before ye go. 'Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just landed three months. Step in,' 9 says the man, " and I'll send her down t ye." [15] THE GIFT OF THE MAGI ONE dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was aH. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher antil one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Delia counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Delia did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles pre dominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually sub siding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which THE GIFT OF THE MAGI no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertain ing thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young." The " Dillingham " had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its pos sessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of " Dilling ham " looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called * Jim " and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dilling ham Young, already introduced to you as Delia. Which is all very good. Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow would be Christ mas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dol lars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for some thing nice for him. Something fine and rare and [17] THE FOUR MILLION sterling something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honour of being owned by Jim. There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longi tudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Delia, being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty sec onds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now, there were two possessions of the James Dil- lingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Delia's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Delia would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. [18] THE GIFT OF THE MAGI So now Delia's beautiful hair fell about her, rip pling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nerv ously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the bril liant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street. Where she stopped the sign read : " Mme. Sof ronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Delia ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the " Sofronie." " Will you buy my hair? " asked Delia. *' I buy hair," said Madame. " Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it." Down rippled the brown cascade. " Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand. " Give it to me quick," said Della t Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ran sacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last. It surely had been made fot [19] THE FOUR MILLION Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamenta tion as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quiet ness and value the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Delia reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends a mammoth task. Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonder fully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and criti cally. [20] THE GIFT OF THE MAGI " If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, " be fore he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents? " At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying- pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never late. Delia doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered : " Please God, make him think I am still pretty." The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two and to be burdened with a family ! He needed a new overcoat and he was with out gloves. Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Delia, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, THE FOUR MILLION nor any of the sentiments that she had been pre pared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face. Delia wriggled off the table and went for him. " Jim, darling," she cried, " don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hah grows awfully fast. Say * Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice what a beautiful, nice gift I've got fcr you." " You've cut off your hair? " asked Jim, labori ously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labour. " Cut it off and sold it," said Delia. " Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I? " Jim looked about the room curiouslyc " You say your hair is gone? " he said, with an air almost of idiocy. " You needn't look for it," said Delia. " It's sold, I tell you sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, " but nobody could [22] THE GIFT OF THE MAGI ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim? " Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Delia. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year what is the difference? A mathe matician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on. Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. " Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, " about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first." White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employ ment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat For there lay The Combs the set of combs, aide [23] THE FOUR MILLION and back, that Delia had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tor toise shell, with jewelled rims just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were ex pensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adorn ments were gone. But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say : " My hair grows so fast, Jim ! " And then Delia leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!" Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. " Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it." Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. " Dell," said he, " let's put our Christmas pres- [24] THE GIFT OF THE MAGI ents away and keep J em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on." The magi, as you know, were wise men wonder fully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christ mas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have iamely re lated to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi. [25] A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE A.T midnight the cafe was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons. And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites. I invoke your consideration of the scene the mar ble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedu lous and largess-loving garpons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the melange of talk and laughter and, if you will, the Wiirzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the scene was truly Parisian. A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new " attraction " there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table d'hote grape fruit. He spoke dis respectfully of the equator, he skipped from conti nent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hydera bad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lap land. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto ! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the cJiu- chula weed. You would have addressed a letter to "E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar Sys tem, the Universe," and have mailed it, feeling con fident that it would be delivered to him. THE FOUR MILLION I was sure that I had found at last the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his world wide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he was as im partial to cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation. And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great almost-cos- mopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedi cated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that " the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown." And whenever they walk " by roaring streets unknown " they remember their native city " most faithful, fool ish, fond ; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond." And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country , one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon. Expression on these subjects was precipitated [28] A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topog raphy along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was " Dixie," and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table. ( It is worth a paragraph to say that this remark able scene can be witnessed every evening in num erous cafes in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the " rebel " air in a Northern city does puzzle a little ; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years' generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a " fad " in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now the war, you know. When " Dixie " was being played a dark-haired THE FOUR MILLION young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his sol't-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out cigarettes. The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Wiirzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowl edged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had. " Would you mind telling me," I began, " whether you are from " The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was jarred into silence. "Excuse me," said he, "but that's a question I never like to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny English men, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to [30] A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handi cap him with the label of any section." " Pardon me," I said, " but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the bands plays ' Dixie ' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N. J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own larger theory, I must confess." And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves. " I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mys teriously, "on the top of a valley, and sing too- ralloo-ralloo." This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan. "I've been around the world twelve times," said he. " I know an Esquimau in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goat- herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle [31] THE FOUR MILLION Creek breakfast food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yoko hama all the year around. I've got slippers waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell 'em how to cook my eggs in Rio Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about being from the North, or the South, or the old manor house in the dale, or Euclid avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just be cause we happened to be born there." " You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite," I said, admiringly. " But it also seems that you would de cry patriotism." "A relic of the stone age," declared Coglan, warmly. " We are all brothers Chinamen, Eng lishmen, Zulus, Patagonians and the people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride in one's city or State or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be." " But while you are wandering in foreign lands," I persisted, " do not your thoughts revert to some spot some dear and " [32] A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE "Nary a spot," interrupted E. R. Coglan, flip pantly. " The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flatteried at the poles, and known as the Earth, is ray abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a Southerner on being introduced to the King of England hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his grand- aunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by s'ome Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he came back to Kabul with the agent. ' Afghanistan ? ' the natives said to him through an interpreter. * Well, not so slow, do you think? ' * Oh, I don't know,' says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at Sixth avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere." My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw some one through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the [33] THE FOUR MILLION would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wiirzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley. I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and I believed in him. How was it? " The men that breed from them they traf fic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown." Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his - My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the cafe. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rush- more Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in ter rific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing " Teasing," My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and rep utation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting. I called McCarthy, one of the French garyons, and asked him the cause of the conflict. The man with the red tie" (that was my co*- " A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE mopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy." " Why," said I, bewildered, " that man is a citizen of the world a cosmopolite. He " " Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, " and he wouldn't stand for no knockin' the place." BETWEEN ROUNDS iHE May moon shone bright upon the private boarding-house of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heydey, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere. The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding-house were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pan cakes. In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs. McCaskey. At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coal [36] BETWEEN ROUNDS on his arm and his pipe in his teeth; and he apolo gised for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds. As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-lid or potato- masher for him to dodge, came only words. Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of his spouse. " I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitch- enware. " Ye can apollygise to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin* out the windy for ye and the victuals cold such as there's money to buy after drinkin' up yer wages at Gallegher's every Saturday evenin', and the gas man here twice to-day for his." " Woman ! " said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, " the noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society. "Pis no more than exercisin" the acrimony cf a gentleman when ye ask the dissent of ladies blockin' the way for steppin' between them. [37] THE FOUR MILLION Will ye bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?" Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware. " Pig's face, is it? " said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at her lord. Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with sham rocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appro priate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the battle, ac cording to courses, should have ended. But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent table d'hoter. Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the com pass of his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equivalent was at [38] BETWEEN ROUNDS hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice. On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Police man Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils. " 'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again," meditated the policeman. " I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure, they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with." And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. " 'Tis probably the cat," said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other direction. The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an in vestigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy, Mike, was lost. Following [39] THE FOUR MILLION the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sym pathy. The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who com plained every day about the noise in the halls, in quired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock. Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. " The little one lost ? " he exclaimed. " I will scour the city." His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said : " Go Ludovic ! " in a baritone voice. " Who ever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." " Give me some thirty or sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need carfares." Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon : " Oh, ar-r-Mike, f 'r Gawd's sake, where is me little bit av a boy? " [401 BETWEEN ROUNDS " When'd ye see him last? " asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the Building Trades League. " Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, " 'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago ! I dunno. But it's lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin' on the side walk only this mornin' or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with work, 'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven " Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. Still, no body should take offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws. No calamity so touches the common heart of hu manity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble ; the ways are so steep and strange. Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy's place. " Gimme a rye-high," he said to the servitor. " Haven't seen a bow-legged r [41] THE FOUR MILLION dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around here anywhere, have you ? " Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. " Think of that dear little babe," said Miss Purdy, " lost from his mother's side perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds oh, isn't it dreadful? " "Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeez ing her hand. " Say I start out and help look for urn!" " Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, " you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing so reckless suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should be fall you, then what " Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines. In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the roast pork had not bene fited. They heard the outcry below, and thrust their heads out of the window. " 'Tis little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, " the beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon ! " [42] BETWEEN ROUNDS "The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the window. " Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be different. If 'twas a woman I'd be willin', for they leave peace behind 'em when they go." Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm. " Jawn," she said, sentimentally, " Missis Mur phy's little bye is lost. 'Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn, 'tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had had one six years ago." " We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact. " But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phe- lan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all." " Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. " 'Tis Pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrim." " Ye lie ! " said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth tin dozen bog-trotting Mc- Caskeys. After him would the bye be named." She leaned over the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below. [43] THE FOUR MILLION " Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey, softly, " I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye." "'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say," said her hus band, " and hurry-up turnips and get-a-move-on-ye- coffee. 'Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right, and tell no lie." Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her hus band's and took his rough hand in hers. " Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. " 'Tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breakin' me heart." Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulders of his wife. " 'Tis foolishness, of course," said he, roughly, ** but I'd be cut up some meself if our little Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard with ye, Judy. Forget it." They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted below. I Long they sat thus. People surged along the side walk, crowding, questioning, filling the air with ru mours, and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth in their midst, like a soft [44] BETWEEN ROUNDS mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went. Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house. "What's up now, Judy?" asked Mr. McCaskey. " J Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCas key, harking. " She says she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room." Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly. " That's yer Phelan," he shouted, sardonically. " Divil a bit would a Pat have done that trick. If the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup." Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her mouth drawn down. Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment, where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Police man Cleary took out his timepiece. " By the deported snakes ! " he exclaimed, " Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fightin' for an [46] THE FOUR MILLION hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm." Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner. Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night. [46] THE SKYLIGHT ROOM FlRST Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the ad mission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the profes sions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlours. Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second-floor-back at $8. Convinced by her sec ond-floor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. Mclntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with pri vate bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper. If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were [47] THE FOUR MILLION taken to look at Mr. Skidder's large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would pay something on his rent. Then oh, then if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dol lars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word " Clara," she would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or storeroom. In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity. [48] THE SKYLIGHT ROOM " Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her half- contemptuous, half-Tuskegeenial tones. One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying : '* Goodness me ! Why didn't you keep up with us ? " Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. ts In this closet," she said, " one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal " " But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," said Miss Leeson, with a shiver. Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the way to the second floor back. " Eight dollars ? " said Miss Leeson. " Dear me ! I'm not Hetty if I do look green. I'm just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower." Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his door. " Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at his pale looks. " I didn't [49] THE FOUR MILLION knot? you were in. I asked the ladj to have a look at your lambrequins." " They're too lovely for anything," said Miss Lee- son, smiling in exactly the way the angels do. After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features. " Anna Held'll jump at it," said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish. Presently the tocsin call of " Clara ! " sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words "Two dollars!" " I'll take it ! " sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed. Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Some- limes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a sky- [50] THE SKYLIGHT ROOM light room when the plans were drawn for her crea tion. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whim sical fancies. Once she let Mr. Skidder read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, " It's No Kid ; or, The Heir of the Subway." There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, " Well, really ! " to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step, and the men would quickly group around her. Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (un spoken) drama in real life. And especially Mr. Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolishu And especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her " the funniest and j oiliest ever," but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable. I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks [51] THE FOUR MILLION to the footlights and drops an epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried out, Falstaff might have ren dered more romance to the ton than would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faith- fullest heart above a 52-inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover ! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen herself; Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdition. There was never a chance for you, Hoover. As Mrs. Parker's roomers sat thus one summer's evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh: " Why, there's Billy Jackson ! I can see him from down here, too." All looked up some at the windows of sky scrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jack son-guided. " It's that star," explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. " Not the big one that twinkles the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson." [521 THE SKYLIGHT ROOM " Well, really ! " said Miss Longnecker. " I didn't know you were an astronomer, Miss Leeson." " Oh, yes," said the small star gazer, " I know as much as any of them about the style of sleeves they're going to wear next fall in Mars." " Well, really ! " said Miss Longnecker. " The star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation Cassio peia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian passage is " '* Oh," said the very young Mr. Evans, " I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it." " Same here," said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. " I think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old astrologers had." " Well, really ! " said Miss Longnecker. " I wonder whether it's a shooting star," remarked Miss Dorn. " I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday." " He doesn't show up very well from down here," said Miss Leeson. " You ought to see him from my room. You know you -can see stars even in the day time from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft of a coal mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with." [53] THE FOUR MILLION There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went out in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop at the hour when she always re turned from her dinner at the restaurant. But she had had no dinner. As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand, and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder's door as he was red-inking a stage direction for Myr tle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in his (unaccepted) comedy, to " pirouette across stage from L to the side of the Count." Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last and opened the door of the skylight room. She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile body scarcely THE SKYLIGHT ROOM hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of a room she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled. For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma. As she lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply. " Good-bye, Billy," she murmured faintly. " You're millions of miles away and you won't even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn't any thing else but darkness to look at, didn't you? . . . Millions of miles. . . . Good-bye, Billy Jackson." Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at 10 the next day, and they forced it open. Vine gar, and the slapping of wrists and burnt feathers [55] THE FOUR MILLION proving of no avail, some one ran to 'phone fat an ambulance. In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. " Ambulance call to 49," he said briefly. " What's the trouble? " " Oh, yes, doctor," sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there should be trouble, in the house was the greater. " I can't think what can be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It's a young woman, a Miss Elsie yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my house " " What room ? " cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger. " The skylight room. It " Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker followed slowly, as her dignity demanded. On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff [561 THE SKYLIGHT ROOM garment that slips down from a nail. Ever after ward there remained crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her. " Let that be," she would answer. " If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be satisfied." The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead. They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was : " Drive like h 1, Wilson," to the driver. That is all. Is it a story ? In the next morning's paper I saw a little news item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together. It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East street, suffering from debility in duced by starvation. It concluded with these words : "Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient will recover." [571 A SERVICE OF LOVE VvHEN one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat oJder that the great wall of China. Joe Larrabce came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he left for New York with a flow ing necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer. Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so prom isingly in a pine-tree village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go " North " and " finish." They could not see her f , but that is our story. Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss [68] A SERVICE OF LOVE chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong. Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other, or each of the other, as you please, and in a short time were married for, (see above) when one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the key board. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor janitor for the privilege of liv ing in a flat with your Art and your Delia. Flat-dwellers shall indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close let the dresser collapse and be* come a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a row ing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and long enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the Labrador. Joe was painting in the class of the great Magis- [59] THE FOUR MILLION ter you know his fame. His fees are high ; his les sons are light his high-lights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Roscnstock you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys. They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was to be come capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar and then contemptuous with Music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room and refuse to go on the stage. But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study ; the cozy dinners and fresh, light break fasts; the interchange of ambitions ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsider able the mutual help and inspiration; and over look my artlessness stuffed olives and cheese sand wiches at 11 p. M. But after a while Art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman doesn't flag it. Everything [60] A SERVICE OF LOVE going out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Herr Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling. For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home elated. " Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, " I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General General A. B. Pinkney's daughter on Seventy-first street. Such a splendid house, Joe you ought to see the front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before. " My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a delicate thing dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest man ners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and, just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice supper." " That's all right for you, Dele," said Joe, attack ing a can of peas with a carving knife and a [61] THE FOUR MILLION hatchet, "but how about me? Do you think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini ! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two." Delia came and hung about his neck. " Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister." "All right," said Joe, reaching for the blue scal loped vegetable dish. " But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't Art. But you're a trump and a dear to do it." " When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard," said Delia, "Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park," said Joe. " And Tinkle gave me per mission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them." " I'm sure you wfll," said Delia, sweetly. a And now let's be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast" [62] A SERVICE OF LOVE During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, cod dled, praised and kissed at 7 o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o'clock when he returned in the evening. At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8x10 (inches) centre table of the 8x10 (feet) flat parlour. " Sometimes," she said, a little wearily, " Clem entina tries me. I'm afraid she doesn't practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But Gen- Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano he is a widower, you know and stands there pulling his white goatee. ' And how are the semiquavers and the demisemi- quavers progressing? ' he always asks. ** I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe! And those Astrakhan rug por tieres. And Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, [63] THE FOUR MILLION I rcallj am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother was once Minister to Bolivia." And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one all legal tender notes and laid them beside Delia's earn ings. " Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he announced overwhelmingly. " Don't joke with me," said Delia " not from Peoria ! " " All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen muffler and a quill tooth pick, lie saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered an other an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight de pot to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it." " I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia, heartily. " You're bound to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars ! We never had so much to spend before. We'll have oysters to-night." "And filet mignon with champignons," said Joe. " Where is the olive fork? " On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home [64] A SERVICE OF LOVE first. He spread his $18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands. Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages. "How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greet ings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously. " Clementina," she explained, " insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health ; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry ! But Gen. Pinkney ! Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed down stairs and sent somebody they said the furnace man or somebody in the basement out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now." " What's this ? " asked Joe, taking the hand ten derly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages. v W wxnething soft," said Delia, " that had oil [65] THE FOUR MILLION on It. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?" she had seen the money on the table. "Did I?" said Joe; "just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot to-day, and he isn't sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?" " Five o'clock, I think," said Delia, plaintively. " The iron I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen. Pinkney, Joe, when " " Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders. " What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?" he asked. She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears. " I couldn't get any pupils," she confessed. " And I couldn't bear to have you give up your les sons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and [66] A SERVICE OF LOVE Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria." " He wasn't from Peoria," said Joe, slowly. " Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe and kiss me, Joe and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina? " "I didn't," said Joe, "until to-night. And I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks." " And then you didn't " " My purchaser from Peoria," said Joe, " and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art but you wouldn't call it either painting or music." And then they both laughed, and Joe began : " When one loves one's Art no service seems " But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. " No," she said " just * When one loves.' " [67] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE EVERY Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and Take or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltz ing, you must work in Rhinegold's paper-box fac tory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few stranger? could boast of having shaken a foot at the regular hops. Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed style of footwork in the two- step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her " fellow." Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her ty Maggie's house every Saturday night so that he* friend could go to the dance with them. [68] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and ath letic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hops with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went 'round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little welter-weight af fair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes. On Saturdays Rhinegold's paper-box factory closed at 3 p. M. On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie's door Anna said, as usual: "Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag ; and Jimmy and me'll come by for you." But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth,, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye. " Thanks, Anna," said Maggie ; " but you and Jimmy needn't bother to-night. I've a gentleman friend that's coming 'round to escort me to the hop." [69] THE FOUR MILLION The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it? " You'll see to-night," said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had gathered in Cupid's vineyard. " He's swell all right. He's two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I'll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall." Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening. Anna's eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her friend's " catch." At 8.30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye discov ered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy. " Oh, gee ! " cried Anna, " Mag ain't made a hit oh, no! Swell fellow? well, I guess! Style? Look at 'urn." "Go as far as you like," said Jimmy, with sand paper in his voice. " Cop him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don't [70] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE mind me. He don't squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!" ** Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. Fm glad for Mag. First fellow she ever had. Oh, here they come." Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the faith ful chum. He stood two inches taller than the aver age Give and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess, its achieve ments in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were not con sidered honourable methods of warfare. The swell ing biceps, the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the super- eminence of the male in the cosmogony of creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle tourneys of Cupid these were the approved arms and ammunition of [711 THE FOUR MILLION the Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, the genuflexions and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle. " A friend cf mine, Mr. Terry O'Sullivan," was Maggie's formula of introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each new-arriv ing Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse. " Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last," was the word that went round among the paper-box girls. " Pipe Mag's floor-walker " thus the Give and Takes expressed their indifferent contempt. Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing part ner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheap ened and diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum to walk over his feet through a two-step. But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first but terfly flight. And though our tropes of fairyland [72] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE be mixed with those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the rose-crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect night. The girls besieged her for introductions to her ** fellow." The Clover Leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance. Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honours of the evening fell thick and fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he introduced manner and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly upon his tongue, and he waltzed twice in succession with the paper-box girl that Dempsey Donovan brought. Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of " Big Mike " O'Sullivan's lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him. Whenever he broke a push cart man's head or shot a member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and Literary Association in the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say: THE FOUR MILLION " The Cap'n 'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye have time, Dempsey, me boy." But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains and black cigars; and some body would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the six- pound dumbbells. So, doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe terpsich- orean performance compared with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paper-box girl. At 10 o'clock the jolly round face of " Big Mike " O'Sul- livan shone at the door for five minutes upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys. Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talk ing rapidly. " Big Mike " looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed. The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls. Terry O'Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted him in the middle of the floor. Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly every one to turn and look at them there was a subtle feeling that two gladiators [74] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE had met in the arena. Two or three Give and Takes with tight coat sleeves drew nearer. **One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Dempsey. ** I hope you're enjoying yourself. Where did you say you lived? " The two gladiators were well matched. Derapsey had, perhaps, ten pounds of weight to give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth with quickness. Demp* sey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over his con spicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law writ ten when the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive. " I live on Grand," said O'Sullivan, insolently ; '* and no trouble to find me at home. Where do you live? " Dempsey ignored the question. " You say your name's O'Sullivan," he went on. " Well, ' Big Mike ' says he never saw you before." " Lots of things he never saw," said the favourite of the hop. w As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, ** O'Sullivans in this district know one another. You [75] THE FOUR MILLION escorted one of our lady members here, and we want a chance to make good. If you've got a family tree let's see a few historical O'Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots?" " Suppose you mind your own business," suggested O'Sullivan, blandly. Dempsey's eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a brilliant idea had struck him. " I've got it now," he said cordially. " It was just a little mistake. You ain't no O'Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not recognis ing you at first." O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick move ment, but Andy Geoghan was ready and caught his arm. Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club, and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted him out through the same door at the rear. This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf [76] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE members requires a word of elucidation. Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature, under the supervision of the board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members guaranteed that. So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary work that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Mag gie. She looked about for her escort. " Smoke up ! " said Rose Cassidy. " Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan picked a scrap with your Liz zie-boy, and they've waltzed out to the slaughter room with him. How's my hair look done up this way, Mag? " Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheese cloth waist. " Gone to fight with Dempsey ! " she said, breath lessly. " They've got to be stopped. Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. Why, he'll he'll kill him!" "Ah, what do you care?" said Rosa. "Don't some of 'em fight every hop?" [77] THE FOUR MILLION But Maggie was off, darting her zig-zag way through the maze of dancers. She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene the Board stand ing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in his shirt sleeves dancing, light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary ; Terry O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom. The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of the Give and Take Associa tion! Such a thing had never happened before. Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning. And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligi ble between his teeth. Dempsey and the board ex changed looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sul- [78] THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE livan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his head in the direction of the door. " The back stairs, Giuseppi," he said, briefly. " Somebody '11 pitch your hat down after you." Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she looked him bravely in the eye. " I knew it, Dempsey," she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their tears. " I knew he was a Guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always carries knives. But you don't understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my life. I got tired of comin' with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, and brought him along. I knew there'd be nothin' doin* for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll resign from the club now." Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan. " Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window," he said, " and tell 'em inside that Mr. O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tammany Hall." And then he turned back to Maggie. ** Say, Mag," he said, " I'll see you home. And [79] THE FOUR MILLION how about next Saturday night? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around for you? " It was remarkable how quickly Maggie's eyes could change from dull to a shining brown. "With you, Dempsey?" she stammered. "Say will a duck swim? " [80] MAN ABOUT TOWN THERE were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery. So I began to inquire. It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases. And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned. The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; [$11 THE FOUR MILLION he wears a brown vest and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing some thing; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and opening it again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue wrist lets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes polished within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him turquoises. But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About Town, was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer (like the smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all. Whereupon I asked a newspaper re porter about him. " Why," said he, " a * Man About Town * is some thing between a * rounder ' and a * clubman.' He isn't exactly well, he fits in between Mrs. Fish's receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn't well, he doesn't belong either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron Workers' Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder Association. I don't exactly know how to describe him to you. You'll see him everywhere there's anything doing. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes every [82] MAN ABOUT TOWN evening ; knows the ropes ; calls every policeman and waiter in town by their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives. You gen erally see him alone or with another man." My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed, but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed. Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, con fidence men, panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, mil lionaires and outlanders hurried, skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no note of them. I knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had served. I wanted my Man About Town. He was a type, and to drop him would be an error a typograph but no ! let us continue. Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an open window, and bending but there, there ! Mamma is interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N w Yo k. The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial re ports, for a certain young man remarked last Sun- da y night that he had taken a flyer in Q., X. & Z. [83] THE FOUR MILLION Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day. Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours' grip; and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it introduces strong drink. I went into a cafe to and while it was being mixed I asked the man who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he understood by the term, epithet, description, desig nation, characterisation or appellation, viz. : a " Man About Town." ** Why," said he, carefully, " it means a fly guy that's wise to the all-night push see? It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the rail anywhere be tween the Flatirons see? I guess that's about what it means." I thanked him and departed. On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her con tribution receptacle gently against my waistcoat pocket. " Would you mind telling me," I asked her, " if [84] MAN ABOUT TOWN you ever meet with the character commonly denomi nated as ' A Man About Town ' during your daily wanderings ? " " I think I know whom you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile. " We see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil's body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faith ful as they are, their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service." She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it. In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing from a cab. He seemed at leisure ; and I put my question to him. He answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would. " There is a type of * Man About Town ' in New York," he answered. "The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon to de fine the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an exact specimen. I would say, off hand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions of dress and man ners; but in the business of poking his nose into [85] THE FOUR MILLION places where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from raths keller to roof garden and from Hester street to Har lem until you can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your ' Man About Town ' has done that. He is always on the scent of something new. He is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence. Hansoms were made for him, and gold-banded cigars; and the curse of music at dinner. There are not so many of him; but his minority report is adopted everywhere. "I'm glad you brought up the subject; I've felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyse it before. I can see now that your * Man About Town ' should have been classified long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models ; and the orchestra plays ' Let's All Go Up to Maud's ' for him, by request, in stead of Handel. He makes his rounds every even ing; while you and I see the elephant once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away immune, while you and I search among the Presi dents for names, and among the stars for addresses to give the desk sergeant." [86] MAN ABOUT TOWN My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence. I seized my advantage. "You have classified him," I cried with joy. " You have painted his portrait in the gallery of city types. But I must meet one face to face. I must study the Man About Town at first hand. Where shall I find him ? How shall I know him ? " Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on. And his cab-driver was waiting for his fare, too. " He is the sublimated essence of Butt-in ; the re fined, intrinsic extract of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils; when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields with the indefatigability of a " " Excuse me," I interrupted, " but can you pro duce one of this type? It is a new thing to me. I must study it. I will search the town over until I find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway." " I am about to dine here," said my friend. " Come inside, and if there is a Man About Town present I will point him out to you. I know most of the regular patrons here." " I am not dining yet," I said to him. * 6 You will excuse me. I am going to find my Man About Towa [87] THE FOUR MILLION this night if I have to rake New York from the Battery to Little Coney Island." I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type gave a pleasant savour of life and interest to the air I breathed. I was glad to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leisurely and with something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige. I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos-Dumont. When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said aloud : " Hasn't it passed yet ? " A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particu larly soft upon my brow that was not at all fevered. A young doctor came along, grinned, and handed me a morning newspaper. "Want to see how it happened?" he asked cheerily. I read the article. Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave off the night before. It closed with these lines: ** Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his YI juries were not serious. He appeared to be a typi* tal Mau About Town.*' [88] THE COP AND THE ANTHEM ON his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand. A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the man sion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready. Soapy's mind became cognisant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigour. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench. The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies [39] THE FOUR MILLION or drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable. For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humbler arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was come. On the pre- yious night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Phil anthropy. There was an endless round of institu tions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every bene fit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Qesar [90] THE COP AND THE ANTHEM had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have it toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which though con ducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gen tleman's private affairs. Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant ; and then, after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An ac commodating magistrate would do the rest. Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm. Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-tied four- in-hand had been presented to him by a lady mis sionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the [91] THE FOUR MILLION table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demi-tasse and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the cafe management ; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge. But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard. Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an epicurean! one. Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of. At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobble stone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons. [92] THE COP AND THE ANTHEM "Where's the man that done that?" inquired the officer excitedly. " Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?" said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune. The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man half way down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful. On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appe tites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmos phere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers. " Now, get busy and call a cop," said Soapy. " And don't keep a gentleman waiting." " No cop for youse," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. " Hey, Con ! " [93] THE FOUR MILLION Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose, joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street. Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fatuously termed to himself a " cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show win dow gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of severe demeanour leaned against a water plug. It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated " masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle. Soapy straightened the lady missionary's ready- made tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the [94] THE COP AND THE ANTHEM young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and " hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the " masher." With half an eye Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raised his hat and said: ** Ah there, Bedelia ! Don't you want to come and play in my yard ? " The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy's coat sleeve. " Sure, Mike," she said joyfully, " if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching." With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the policeman overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty. At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts s vows and librettos. [95] THE FOUR MILLION Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent the atre he caught at the immediate straw of " disorderly conduct." On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gib berish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwise disturbed the welkin. The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a citizen. " 'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin* the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be." Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind. In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man light ing a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily. [96] THE COP AND THE ANTHEM w My umbrella," he said, sternly. " Oh, is it ? " sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. " Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call a cop? There stands one on the corner." The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously. " Of course," said the umbrella man " that is well, you know how these mistakes occur I if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me I picked it up this morning in a restaurant If you recognise it as yours, why I hope you'll " " Of course it's mine," said Soapy, viciously. The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approach ing two blocks away. Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrath- fully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong. At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the [97] THE FOUR MILLION east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint, He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench. But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and ram bling and gabled. Through one violet-stained win dow a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organ ist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence. The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehi cles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the an them that the organist played cemented Soapy to thv iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars. The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, [98] THE COP AND THE ANTHEM the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives that made up his existence. And also in a moment his heart responded thrill- ingly to this hovel mood. An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his des perate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pur sue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. To morrow he would go into the roaring downtown dis trict and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman* "What are you doin' here? " asked the officer. " NothinY' said Soajy. " Then come along," said the policeman. " Three months on the Island." said the Magis trate in the Police Court the next morning [99] AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE IN an art exhibition the other day I saw a paint ing that had been sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the Un erring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a fountain-pen. The idea of Kraft but that is not the beginning of the story. Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at Cypher's, on Eighth Avenue. I say " took." When we had money, Cypher got it " off of " us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in Cypher's sullenness and smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson [100] AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE had eaten and paid for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter be hind his film. Now and then we paid up back scores. But the chief thing at Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She was a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of her heroic sisters as " Liver-and-Bacon Enlivening the World." She belonged to Cypher's. You expected to see her colossal figure loom through that reeking blue cloud of smoke from frying fat just as you expect the Palisades to appear through a drifting Hudson River fog. There amid the steam of vegetables and the vapours of acres of " ham and," the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of " short orders," the cries of the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like [101] THE FOUR MILLION some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howl ing savages. Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majes tic that they could be followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows. She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she was of such superb Evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from the beginning. Cypher's store of eatables she poured out upon us with royal indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew no ex haustion. Her voice rang like a g eat silver bell; her smile was many-toothed and frequent; she seemed like a yellow sunrise on mountain tops. I never saw her but I thought of the Yosemite. And yet, somehow, I could never think of her as existing outside of Cypher's. There nature had placed her, and she had taken root and grown mightily. She seemed happy, and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed pleasure of a child that receives an unexpected donation. It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held latently. It came up apropos, of course, of certain questions of art at which we were hammering. One of us compared the harmony [102] AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE existing between a Haydn symphony and pistache ice cream to the exquisite congruity between Milly and Cypher's. " There is a certain fate hanging over Milly," said Kraft, " and if it overtakes her she is lost to Cypher's and to us." " She will grow fat? " asked Judkins, fearsomely. " She will go to night school and become refined? " I ventured anxiously. " It is this," said Kraft, punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with a stiff forefinger. "Caesar had his Brutus the cotton has its bollworm, the chorus girl has her Pittsburger, the summer boarder has his poison ivy, the hero has his Carnegie medal, art has its Morgan, the rose has its " " Speak," I interrupted, much perturbed. " You do not think that Milly will begin to lace? " " One day," concluded Kraft, solemnly, " there will come to Cypher's for a plate of beans a mil lionaire lumberman from Wisconsin, and he will marry Milly." M Never ! " exclaimed Judkins and I, in horror. " A lumberman," repeated Kraft, hoarsely. '* And a millionaire lumberman ! " I sighed, despairingly. " From Wisconsin ! " groaned Judkins. [103] THE FOUR MILLION We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her. Few things were less improbable. Milly, like some vast virgin stretch of pine woods, was made to catch the lumberman's eye. And well we knew the habits of the Badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they hie, and lay their goods at the feet of the girl who serves them beans in a beanery. Why, the alphabet itself connives. The Sunday newspaper's headliner's work is cut for him. " Winsome Waitress Wins Wealthy Wisconsin Woodsman." For a while we felt that Milly was on the verge of being lost to us. It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjust ment of Nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee of a tree murderer. No ! In Cypher's she belonged in the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone china and rattling casters. Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the wildwood discharged upon ua Milly's preordained confiscator our fee to adjust- [104-] AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE ment and order. But Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of the visitation. We were at our supper of beef stew and dried apples when he trotted in as if on the heels of a dog team, and made one of the mess at our table. With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house. We embraced him as a specimen, and in three minutes we had all but died for one another a* friends. He was rugged and bearded and wind-dried. He had just come off the " trail," he said, at one of the North River ferries. I fancied I could see the snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Klondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions. " Bank drafts for two millions," was his sum ming up, " and a thousand a day piling up from my claims. And now I want some beef stew and canned peaches. I never got off the train since I mushed out of Seattle, and I'm hungry. The stuff the niggers feed you on Pullmans don't count. You gentlemen order what you want." And then Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes [105] THE FOUR MILLION on her bare arm loomed up big and white and pink and awful as Mount Saint Elias with a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Klondiker threw down his pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall half-way, and stared at her. You could almost see the diamond tiaras on Milly's brow and the hand-embroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant to buy for her. At last the bollworm had attacked the cotton the poison ivy was reaching out its tendrils to entwine the summer boarder the millionaire lumberman, thinly disguised as the Alaskan miner, was about to engulf our Milly and upset Nature's adjustment. Kraft was the first to act. He leaped up and pounded the Klondiker's back. " Come out and drink," he shouted. " Drink first and eat after ward." Judkins seized one arm and I the other. Gaily, roaringly, irresistibly, in jolly-good-fellow style, we dragged him from the restaurant to a cafe, stuffing his pockets with his embalmed birds and in digestible nuggets. There he rumbled a roughly good-humoured pro test. " That's the girl for my money," he declared. " She can eat out of my skillet the rest of her life. Why, I never see such a fine girl. I'm going back there and ask her to marry me. I guess she won't [106] AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE want to sling hash any more when she sees the pile of dust I've got." "You'll take another whiskey and milk now," Kraft persuaded, with Satan's smile. "I thought you up-country fellows were better sports." Kraft spent his puny store of coin at the bar and then gave Judkins and me such an appealing look that we went down to the last dime we had in toast ing our guest. Then, when our ammunition was gone and the Klondiker, still somewhat sober, began to babble again of Milly, Kraft whispered into his ear such a polite, barbed insult relating to people who were miserly with their funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver and notes, call ing for all the fluids in the world to drown the imputation. Thus the work was accomplished. With his own guns we drove him from the field. And then we had him carted to a distant small hotel and put to bed with his nuggets and baby seal-skins stuffed around him. " He will never find Cypher's again," said Kraft. " He will propose to the first white apron he sees in a dairy restaurant to-morrow. And Milly I mean the Natural Adjustment is saved ! v [107] THE FOUR MILLION 'And back to Cypher's went we three, and, finding customers scarce, we joined hands and did an In dian dance with Milly in the centre. This, I say, happened three years ago. And about that time a little luck descended upon us three, and we were enabled to buy costlier and less wholesome food than Cypher's. Our paths separated, and I saw Kraft no more and Judkins seldom. But, as I said, I saw a painting the other day that was sold for $5,000. The title was " Boadicea," and the figure seemed to fill all out-of-doors. But of all the picture's admirers who stood before it, I believe I was the only one who longed for Boadicea to stalk from her frame, bringing me corned-beef hash with poached egg. I hurried away to see Kraft. His satanic eyes were the same, his hair was worse tangled, but his clothes had been made by a tailor. " I didn't know," I said to him. " We've bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money," said he. " Any evening at 7." " Then," said I, " when you led us against the lumberman the Klondiker it wasn't altogether on account of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature?" " Well, not altogether," said Kraft, with a grin." [108] MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG I DON'T suppose it will knock any of you peo ple off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies that are still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelee horror. But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such as Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger, talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady 'Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expected to perform any tricks with the art of speech. I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown. The first thing I can recol lect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. [109] THE FOUR MILLION Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine Pomeranian-Hambletonian-Red Irish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis fox terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gros grain flannelette in her shopping bag till she cornered it, and gave up. From that moment I was a pet a mamma's own wootsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallop her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice : " Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums? " From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mis tress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased mto the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize. I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with Parian mar ble in the entrance hall and cobblestones above the first floor. Our flat was three fl well, not flights [1107 MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things 1903 antique unholstered parlour set, oil chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea house, rubber plant and husband. By Sirius ! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked? well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for a walk. If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the air-shaft that's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff. [Ill] THE FOUR MILLION I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my corner watching that fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose but what could I do? A dog can't chew cloves. I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked so much alike that people noticed it when we went out ; so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live. One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way: " What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful [11*] MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone." That matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face. " Why, doggie," says he, " good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie Cats?" Cats! Could speak! But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humana were denied the speech of animals. The only com mon ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction. In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan terrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation. " See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip," I says, " you know that it ain't the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. 1 never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an ama teur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it" [113] THE FOUR MILLION " Him? " says the black-and-tan. " Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he's as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em all jackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swing ing doors." The pointer I got from that terrier vaudeville please copy set me to thinking. One evening about 6 o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called " Tweet- ness." I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still " Lovey " is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the tail of one's self respect. At a quite place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, re fined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press despatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook. " Why, darn my eyes," says the old man, with a MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG grin ; " darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see how long's it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the foot-rest? I believe I'll " I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells com ing. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home. When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street. " Poor doggie," says he ; " good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. 'S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy." I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs happy as a pug on a rug. " You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser," I said to him "you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg- stealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't want [115] THE FOUR MILLION to leave .you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards forever more ? " Maybe you'll say he didn't understand maybe he didn't. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking. " Doggie," says he, finally, " we don't live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and that's no flattery. I'm offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachs hund." There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them. On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun : " Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains." But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: " You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, ul- [116] MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG phur-coloured son of a door mat, do you know what I'm going to call you? " I thought of " Lovey," and I whined dolefully. " I'm going to call you * Pete,* " says my master ; and if I'd had five tails I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion. tllTJ THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN THE Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue- Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon. The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and per colates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round paste board pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside. Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glace". There, as it should be, the druggist is a coiin- [118] LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN seller, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. There fore Ikey's corniform, be-spectacled nose and nar row, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much desired. Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain you must have guessed it Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth ; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed ram bler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and valerianate of ammonia. The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk McGowan. Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright [119] THE FOUR MIL! ION smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no out fielder as Ikey was ; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery. One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smooth-faced, hard, in domitable, good-natured, upon a stool. " Ikey," said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder, " get busy with your ear. It's drugs for me if you've got the line I need." Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but found none. " Take your coat off," he ordered. " I guess al ready that you have been stuck in the ribs with a knife. I have many times told you those Dagoes would do you up." Mr. McGowan smiled. "Not them," he $aid. '* Not any Dagoes. But you've located the diagnosis all right enough it's under my coat, near the ribs. Say ! Ikey Rosy and me are goin' to run awaj and get married to-night." Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of [120] LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom. " That is," he continued, " if she keeps in the no tion until the time comes. We've been layin' pipes for the getaway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy. We've agreed on to-night, and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll stand me up when it comes to the scratch." "You said you wanted drugs," remarked Ikey. Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanour. He made a patent-medicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger. " I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start to-night for a million," he said. " I've got a little flat up in Harlem all ready, with chrysan themums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged a pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9 :30. It's got to come off. And if Rosy don't change her mind again ! " Mr. Mc Gowan ceased, a prey to his doubts. ** I don't see then yet," said Ikey, shortly, " what THE FOUR MILLION makes it that you talk of drugs, or what 1 can bi doing about it." " Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit," went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his argu ments. " For a week he hasn't let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll never regret flyin* the coop with Chunk McGowan." " You will excuse me, Chunk," said Ikey. " I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon." " Say," said McGowan, looking up suddenly, " say, Ikey, ain't there a drug of some kind some kind of powders that'll make a girl like you better if you give 'em to her? " Ikey's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could an swer, McGowan continued: "Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed 'em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high and every body else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks." Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy's territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure. " I thought," went on Chunk hopefully, " that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the stufPll work just for a couple hours it'll do the trick." "When is this foolishness of running away to be happening? " asked Ikey. " Nine o'clock," said Mr. McGowan. " Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine old Parvenzano lets me through to his back yard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I go under her window and help her down the fire-escape. We've got to make it early on the preacher's account. It's all dead easy if Rosy don't balk when the flag drops. Can you fix me one of them powders, Ikey ? " Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly. " Chunk," said he, " it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To [123] THE FOUR MILLION you alone of my acquaintance would I intrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosy to think of you." Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each con taining a quarter of a grain of morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder would insure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleepe**. This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinvar. The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr. Riddle was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sud den in action. " Much obliged," he said, briefly, to Ikey. " The lazy Irish loafer! My own room's just above Rosy's. I'll just go up there myself after supper and load the shot-gun and wait. If he comes in my back yard he'll go away in a ambulance instead of a bridal chaise." With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheu* for a [124] LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN many-hours deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture. All night in the Blue Light Drug Store he waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy, but none came. At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk ar rived and Ikey started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn the outcome. And, lo ! as he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang from a pass ing street car and grasped his hand Chunk Mc Gowan with a victor's smile and flushed with joy. "Pulled it off," said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. " Rosy hit the fire-escape on time to a second, and we was under the wire at the Reverend's at 9.30^. She's up at the flat she cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue kimono Lord! how lucky I am! You must pace up some day, Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, and that's where I'm heading for now." " The the powder? " stammered Ikey. " Oh, that stuff you gave me ! " said Chunk, broad ening his grin ; " well, it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at Riddle's, and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, * Chunk, if you get the girl get her on the square don't try any [125] THE FOUR MILLION hocus-pocus with a thoroughbred like her.' And I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket. And then my lamps fall on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin* in a proper affection to ward his comin* son-in-law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man Riddle's coffee- see? " [126] C/LD Anthony Rockwell, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall's Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the right the aristo cratic clubman, G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones came out to his waiting motor-car, wrinkling a con tumelious nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance sculpture of the soap palace's front elevation. " Stuck-up old statuette of nothing doing ! " com mented the ex-Soap King. " The Eden Musee '11 get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he don't watch out. I'll have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer and see if that'll make his Dutch nose turn up any higher." And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the door of his library and shouted " Mike ! " in the same voice that had once chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies. "Tell my son," said Anthony to the answering menial, "to come in here before he leaves the house." [127] THE FOUR MILLION When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy counte nance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and rattled the keys hi his pocket with the other. " Richard," said Anthony Rockwall, " what do you pay for the soap that you use? " Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of unexpected nesses as a girl at her first party. " Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad." '* And your clothes?" " I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule." " You're a gentleman," said Anthony, decidedly, "I've heard of these young bloods spending $24 a dozen for soap, and going over the hundred mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of 'em, and yet you stick to what's decent and mod erate. Now I use the old Eureka not only for sentiment, but it's the purest soap made. Whenever you pay more than 10 cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and labels. But 50 cents is doing very well for a young man in your generation, position and condition. As I said, you're a gentleman. They say it takes three generations to make one. They're off* [128] MAMMON AND THE ARCHER Money '11 do it as slick as soap grease. It's made you one. By hokey! it's almost made one of me. I'm nearly as impolite and disagreeable and ill-mannered as these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me that can't sleep of nights because I bought in between 'em." " There are some things that money can't accom plish," remarked young Rockwall, rather gloomily. " Now, don't say that," said old Anthony, shocked. " I bet my money on money ever time. I've been through the encyclopaedia down to Y looking for something you can't buy with it; and I expect to have to take up the appendix next week. I'm for money against the field. Tell me something money won't buy." '* For one thing," answered Richard, rankling a little, " it won't buy ^ >ne into the exclusive circles of society." "Oho! won't it? " thundered the champion of the root of evil. " You tell me where your exclusive circles would be if the first Astor hadn't had the money to pay for his steerage passage over? " Richard sighed. " And that's what I was coming to," said the old man, less boisterously. " That's why I asked you to come in. There's something going wrong with you, [129] THE FOUR MILLION boy. I've been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could lay my hands on eleven millions within twenty-four hours, besides the real estate. If it's your liver, there's the Rambler down in the bay, coaled, and ready to steam down to the Ba hamas in two days." " Not a bad guess, dad ; you haven't missed it far." " Ah," said Anthony, keenly ; " what's her name? " Richard oegan to walk up and down the library floor. There was enough comradeship and sympa thy in this crude old father of his to draw his confidence. "Why don't you ask her?" demanded old An thony. " She'll jump at you. You've got the money and the looks, and you're a decent boy. Your hands are clean. You've got no Eureka soap on 'em. You've been to college, but she'll overlook that." " I haven't had a chance," said Richard. " Make one," said Anthony. " Take her for a walk in the park, or a straw ride, or walk home with her from church. Chance ! Pshaw ! " " You don't know the social mill, dad. She's part of the stream that turns it. Every hour and min ute of her time is arranged for days in advance. I must have that girl, dad, or this town is a black- [130] MAMMON AND THE ARCHER jack swamp forevermore. And I can't write it I can't do that." " Tut ! " said the old man. " Do you mean to tell me that with all the money I've got you can't get an hour or two of a girl's time for yourself? " " I've put it off too late. She's going to sail for Europe at noon day after to-morrow for a two years' stay. I'm to see her alone to-morrow evening for a few minutes. She's at Larchmont now at her aunt's. I can't go there. But I'm allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station to-mor row evening at the 8.30 train. We drive down Broadway to Wallack's at a gallop, where her mother and a box party will be waiting for us in the lobby. Do you think she would listen to a declaration from me during that six or eight minutes under those circumstances? No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one tangle that your money can't unravel. We can't buy one minute of time with cash ; if we could, rich people would live longer. There's no hope of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails." "All right, Richard, my boy," said old Anthony, cheerfully. " You may run along down to your club now. I'm glad it ain't your liver. But don't forget [131] THE FOUR MILLION to burn a few punk sticks in the joss house to the great god Mazuma from time to time. You say money won't buy time? Well, of course, you can't order eternity wrapped up and delivered at your residence for a price, but I've seen Father Time get pretty bad stone bruises on his heels when he walked through the gold diggings.'* That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, sentimental, wrinkled, sighing, oppressed by wealth, in to Brother Anthony at his evening paper, and began discourse on the subject of lovers' woes. " He told me all about it," said brother Anthony, yawning. " I told him my bank account was at his service. And then he began to knock money. Said money couldn't help. Said the rules of society couldn't be bucked for a yard by a team of ten- millionaires." " Oh, Anthony," sighed Aunt Ellen, " I wish you would not think so much of money. Wealth is nothing where a true affection is concerned. Love is all-powerful. If he only had spoken earlier! She could not have refused our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have no opportunity to address her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to your son." At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took [132] MAMMON AND THE ARCHER a quaint old gold ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard. " Wear it to-night, nephew," she begged. " Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when you had found the one you loved." Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he 'phoned for his oab. At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirty-two. " We mustn't keep mamma and the others wait ing," said she. " To Wallack's Theatre as fast as you can drive ! " said Richard loyally. They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white-starred lane that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills of morning. At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop. " I've dropped a ring," he apologised, as he climbed out. " It was my mother's, and I'd hate to [133] THE FOUR MILLION lose it. I won't detain you a minute I saw where it felL" In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring. But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of the cab. The 'cabman tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off. He tried the right, and had to back away from a furniture van that had no business to be there. He tried to buck out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses. One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite sud denly in the big city. "Why don't you drive on?" said Miss Lantry, impatiently. " We'll be late." Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of waggons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth street cross one another as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. And still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling them selves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and [134] MAMMON AND THE ARCHER adding their drivers' imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the proportions of this one. " I'm very sorry," said Richard, as he resumed his seat, " but it looks as if we are stuck. They won't get this jumble loosened up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring we " *' Let me see the ring," said Miss Lantry. " Now that it can't be helped, I don't care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway." At 11 o'clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rockwall's door. " Come in," shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading a book of piratical adven tures. Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a grey- haired angel that had been left on earth by mistake. " They're engaged, Anthony," she said, softly. " She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the theatre there was a street blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it. " And oh s brother Anthony, don't ever boast of the power of money again. A little emblem of true [135] THE FOUR MILLION love a little ring that symbolised unending and unmercenary affection was the cause of our Rich ard finding his happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And before they could continue the blockade occurred. He spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross compared with true love, Anthony." "All right," said old Anthony. "I'm glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I wouldn't spare any expense in the matter if " " But, brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?" " Sister," said Anthony Rockwall. " I've got my pirate in a devil of a scrape. His ship has just been scuttled, and he's too good a judge of the value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with this chapter." The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who read it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for truth. The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie, who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony Rockwall's house, and was at once re ceived in the library. "Well," said Anthony, reaching for his cheque- [186] MAMMON AND THE ARCHER book, " it was a good bilin' of soap. Let's see you had $5,000 in cash." "I paid out $300 more of my own," said Kelly. " I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5 ; but the trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motormen wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me hardest $50 I paid two, and the rest $20 and $25. But didn't it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley's statue." " Thirteen hundred there you are, Kelly," said Anthony, tearing off a check. " Your thousand, and the $300 you were out. You don't despise money, do you, Kelly ? " " Me? " said Kelly. " I can lick the man that in vented poverty." Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door. " You didn't notice," said he, " anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a fat boy without any clothes on footing arrows around with a bow, did you?" THE FOUR MILLION Why, no," said Kelly, mystified. " I didn't. If he was like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got there.*' " I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand," chuckled Anthony. " Good-by, Kelly." [158) SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE IT was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have in augurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation. Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card! To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinee. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed. The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to [139] THE FOUR MILLION open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice any one try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way? Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhand} 7 weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a busi ness college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying. The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah's battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg's Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall- roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg's 40-cent, five-course table d'hote (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gen tleman's head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the d&y of the week. [140] SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from " hors d'oeuvre " to " not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas." Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant a new bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required. In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiter an obsequious one if possible and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg's customers on the morrow. Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puz zled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing with her. And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the cross- [141] THE FOUR MILLION town streets. The hand-organs still played " In the Good Old Summertime," with their December vivac ity and expression. Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam. And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter. One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant haH bedroom ; " house heated ; scrupulously clean ; conven iences; seen to be appreciated." She had no work to do except Schulenberg's menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the win dow. The calendar on the wall kept crying to her: ** Springtime is here, Sarah springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You've got a neat figure yourself, Sarah a nice springtime figure why do you look out the window so sadly?" Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Look ing out the window she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal ; and Sarah was looking down a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses. Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must have the flowering crocus, [142] SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE the wood-starring dogwood, the voice of bluebird even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in Green to their dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kin there come straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no stepchildren unless they choose to be. On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer. (In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and cripples interest. Let it march, march.) Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old Farmer Franklin's son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a tele phone in his cow house, and he could figure up ex actly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon. It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms against her brown tresses; and she [143] THE FOUR MILLION had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands. They were to marry in the spring at the very first signs of spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter. A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant's next day fare in old Schulenberg's angular hand. Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally in an hour and a half the twenty-one menu cards were written and ready. To-day there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups were lighter; pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only with Rus sian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becom ingly exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was diminuendo con amore. The frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled ; the richer puddings had vanished; the sausage, with his drap ery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant [144] SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE thanatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet but doomed maple. Sarah's fingers danced like midgets above a sum mer stream. Down through the courses she worked, giving each item its position according to its length with an accurate eye. Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables. Carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima beans, cab bage and then Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the key board rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs. For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions dandelions with some kind of egg but bother the egg! dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow's crown of sorrow reminder of her happiest days. Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer thif test: Let the Marechal Niel roses that Percy [145] THE FOUR MILLION brought you on the night you gave him your heart be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a Schulenberg table d'hote. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens dishonoured the sooner would she have sought the lethean herbs of the good apothecary. But what a witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it but the little hardy courier of the fields with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this dent-de-lion this lion's tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he will assist at love-making, wreathed in my lady's nut-brown hair; young and callow and unblossomed, he goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress. By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her miod and heart in the meadow lane with her young fanner. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker's motor car. At 6 o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompani ment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an ignominous vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as orna ments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true affection. At 7.30 the couple in the next room began to quar rel: the man in the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out " The Cloister and the Hearth," the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard. The front door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, just as she did! And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the [147] THE FOUR MILLION book on the floor and the first round easily the bear's. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners. "Why haven't you written oh, why?" cried Sarah. " New York is a pretty large town," said Walter Franklin. " I came in a week ago to your old ad dress. I found that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Fri day bad luck. But it didn't prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since I " " I wrote ! " said Sarah, vehemently. "Never got it!" " Then how did you find me ? " The young farmer smiled a springtime smile. " I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening," said he. " I don't care who knows it ; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived." [148] SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE " I remember," sighed Sarah, happily. " That was dandelions below cabbage." " I'd know that cranlcy capital W 'way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world," said Franklin. "Why, there's no W in dandelions," said Saiah, in surprise. The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to a line. Sarah recognised the first card she had typewrit-, ten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys. Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item: "DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD- BOILED EGG." [149] SUPPOSE you should be walking down Broad way after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and some thing serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful woman, wonderful in diamonds and Russian sables. She thrusts hur riedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the sec ond button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, " parallelogram ! " and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That would be pure adventure. Would you ac cept it? Not you. You would flush with embar rassment; you would sheepishly drop the roll and continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly for the missing button. This you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead. [150] THE GREEN DOOR True adventurers have never been plentiful. They who are set down in print as such have been mostly business men with newly invented methods. They have been out after the things they wanted golden fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Son when he started back home. Half-adventurers brave and splendid figures have been numerous. From the Crusades to the Palisades they have enriched the arts of history and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick so they were not followers of true adventure. In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Ad venture are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roain the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a win dow a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house ; instead of at our familiar curb [151] THE FOUR MILLION a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door, whicK one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance; we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden souse of rain and our umbrella may be shel tering the daughter of the Full Moon and first cousin of the Sidereal System ; at every corner hand kerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the ram rod of convention down our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect chat our romance has been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe- deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator. Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings on which he did not go forth from his hall bedchamber in search of the unexpected and the egregious. The most interesting thing in life seemed: to him to be what might lie just around the next corner. Sometimes his willingness to tempt fate led [152] THE GREEN DOOR him into strange paths. Twice he had spent the night in a station-house; again and again he had found himself the dupe of ingenious and mercenary tricksters ; his watch and money had been the price of one flattering allurement. But with undiminished ardour he picked up every glove cast before him into the merry lists of adventure. One evening Rudolf was strolling along a cross- town street in the older central part of the city. Two streams of people filled the sidewalks the home-hurrying, and that restless contingent that abandons home for the specious welcome of the thousand-candle-power table d'hote. The young adventurer was of pleasing presence, and moved serenely and watchfully. By daylight he was a salesman in a piano store. He wore his tie drawn through a topaz ring instead of fastened with a stick pin; and once he had written to the editor of a magazine that " Junie's Love Test," by Miss Libbey, had been the book that had most in fluenced his life. During his walk a violent chattering of teeth in a glass case on the sidewalk seemed at first to draw his attention (with a qualm), to a restaurant before which it was set; but a second glance revealed the electric letters of a dentist's sign high above the [153] THE FOUR MILLION next door. A giant negro, fantastically dressed in a red embroidered coat, yellow trousers and a mili tary cap, discreetly distributed cards to those of the passing crowd who consented to take them. This mode of dentistic advertising was a common sight to Rudolf. Usually he passed the dispenser of the dentist's cards without reducing his store; but to-night the African slipped one into his hand so deftly that he retained it there smiling a little at the successful feat. When he had travelled a few yards further he glanced at the card indifferently. Surprised, he turned it over and looked again with interest. One side of the card was blank ; on the other was written in ink three words, "The Green Door." And then Rudolf saw, three steps in front of him, a man throw down the card the negro had given him as he passed. Rudolf picked it up. It was printed with the dentist's name and address and the usual sched ule of " plate work " and " bridge work " and " crowns," and specious promises of " painless " operations. The adventurous piano salesman halted at the cor ner and considered. Then he crossed the street, walked down a block, recrossed and joined the up ward current of people again. Without seeming to [154] THE GREEN DOOR notice the negro as he passed the second time, he carelessly took the card that was handed him. Ten steps away he inspected it. In the same handwriting that appeared on the first card " The Green Door " was inscribed upon it. Three or four cards were tossed to the pavement by pedestrians both following and leading him. These fell blank side up. Rudolf turned them over. Every one bore the printed legend of the dental " parlours." Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true fol lower. But twice it had been done, and the quest was on. Rudolf walked slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case of rattling teeth. This time as he passed he received no card. In spite of his gaudy and ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian dis played a natural barbaric dignity as he stood, of fering the cards suavely to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase akin to the jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not only did he withhold a card this time, but it seemed to Rudolf that he received from the shining and massive black countenance a look of cold, almost contemptuous disdain. [155] THE FOUR MILLION The look stung the adventurer. He read in it a silent accusation that he had been found wanting. Whatever the mysterious written words on the cards might mean, the black had selected him twice from the throng for their recipient; and now seemed to have condemned him as deficient in the wit and spirit to engage the enigma. Standing aside from the rush, the young man made a rapid estimate of the building in which he conceived that his adventure must lie. Five stories high it rose. A small restaurant occupied the base ment. The first floor, now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this a poly glot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions of domesticity. After concluding his survey Rudolf walked briskly up the high flight of stone steps into the house. Up two flights of the carpeted stairway he continued ; and at its top paused. The hallway there was dimly lighted by two pale jets of gas one far to his right, the other nearer, to his left. He looked toward the [156] THE GREEN DOOR nearer light and saw, within its wan halo, a green door. For one moment he hesitated ; then he seemed to see the contumelious sneer of the African juggler of cards; and then he walked straight to the green door and knocked against it. Moments like those that passed before his knock was answered measure the quick breath of true ad venture. What might not be behind those green panels ! Gamesters at play ; cunning rogues baiting their traps with subtle skill; beauty in love with courage, and thus planning to be sought by it; danger, death, love, disappointment, ridicule any of these might respond to that temerarious rap. A faint rustle was heard inside, and the door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there, white-faced and tottering. She loosed the knob and swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolf caught her and laid her on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took a swift glance around the room by the light of a flick ering gas jet. Neat, but extreme poverty was the story that he read. The girl lay still, as if in a faint. Rudolf looked around the room excitedly for a barrel. People must be rolled upon a barrel who no, no; that was for [157] THE FOUR MILLION drowned persons. He began to fan her with his hat. That was successful, for he struck her nose with the brim of his derby and she opened her eyes. And then the young man saw that hers, indeed, was the one missing face from his heart's gallery of inti mate portraits. The frank, grey eyes, the little nose, turning pertly outward; the chestnut hair, curling like the tendrils of a pea vine, seemed the right end and reward of all his wonderful adventures. But the face was wofully thin and pale. The girl looked at him calmly, and then smiled. "Fainted, didn't I?" she asked, weakly. "Well, who wouldn't? You try going without anything to eat for three days and see ! " " Himmel ! " exclaimed Rudolf, jumping up. " Wait till I come back." He dashed out the green door and down the stairs. In twenty minutes he was back again, kicking at the door with his toe for her to open it. With both arms he hugged an array of wares from the grocery and the restaurant. On the table he laid them bread and butter, cold meats, cakes, pies, pickles, oysters, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk and one of red- hot tea. " This is ridiculous," said Rudolf, blusteringly, " to go without eating. You must quit making elec- [158] THE GREEN DOOR tion bets of this kind. Supper is ready." He helped her to a chair at the table and asked : " Is there a cup for the tea ? " " On the shelf by the window," she answered. When he turned again with the cup he saw her, with eyes shining rapturously, begin ning upon a huge Dill pickle that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman's unerring in stinct. He took it from her, laughingly, and poured the cup full of milk. " Drink that first," he ordered, " and then you shall have some tea, and then a chicken wing. If you are very good you shall have a pickle to-morrow. And now, if you'll allow me to be your guest we'll have supper." He drew up the other chair. The tea brightened the girl's eyes and brought back some of her colour. She began to eat with a sort of dainty ferocity like some starved wild animal. She seemed to regard the young man's presence and the aid he had ren dered her as a natural thing not as though she undervalued the conventions; but as one whose great stress gave her the right to put aside the artificial for the human. But gradually, with the return of strength and comfort, came also a sense of the little conventions that belong; and she began to tell him her little story. It was one of a thousand such as v ,he city yawns at every day the shop girl's story [159] THE FOUR MILLION of insufficient wages, further reduced by " fines " that go to swell the store's profits; of time lost through illness ; and then of lost positions, lost hope, and the knock of the adventurer upon the green door. But to Rudolf the history sounded as big as the Iliad or the crisis in " Junie's Love Test." " To think of you going through all that," he exclaimed. " It was something fierce," said the girl, sol emnly. "And you have no relatives or friends in the city? " None whatever." "I am all alone in the world, too," said Rudolf, after a pause. "I am glad of that," said the girl, promptly; and somehow it pleased the young man to hear that she approved of his bereft condition. Very suddenly her eyelids dropped and she sighed deeply. " I'm awfully sleepy," she said, " and I feel so good" Rudolf rose and took hie hat. " Then I'll say good-night. A long eight's sleep will be fine for you." [160] THE GREEN DOOR He held out bis hand, and she took it and said