THE SLIM 
 PRINCESS 
 
 BY GEORGE ADE 
 
 N 
 
 ^r 
 
 rrxl: 
 
 \ / 
 
 
TIE SUM 
 
I consented to deliver a message for him 
 
THE 
 
 SLIM PRINCESS 
 
 Bg 
 GEORGE ADE 
 
 Author of " 
 Fables in Slang 
 In Pastures New, Pink Marsh, etc. 
 
 With Illustrations by 
 
 GEORGE F. KERR 
 
 NEW YORK 
 A. L. BURT COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright 1906, by the 
 
 Curtis Publishing 
 
 Company 
 
 Copyright 1907 
 .The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
 Copyright 1011 
 /The Bobbs-Merrill Company 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTBR PAGE 
 
 I WOMAN IN MOROVENIA 1 
 
 II KALORA'S AFFLICTION 5 
 
 III THE CRUELTY OF LAW 12 
 
 IV THE GARDEN PARTY 18 
 
 Y HE ARRIVES 38 
 
 VI HE DEPARTS 60 
 
 VII THE ONLY KOLDO . 68 
 
 VIII BY MESSENGER . 85 
 
 IX As TO WASHINGTON, D. C 99 
 
 X ON THE WING . 108 
 
 XI An OUTING A REUNION 114 
 
 XII THE GOVERNOR CABLES 129 
 
 XIII THE HOME-COMING 140 
 
 XIV HEROISM REWARDED 147 
 
 912767 
 
THE SLIM PRINCESS 
 
 WOMAN IN MOROVENIA 
 
 Morovenia is a state in: which J)0tli the 
 mosque and the mQtor : ca^jaow. ; jCCQtJr,in 
 the same landscape. It started out to be 
 Turkish and later decided to be Euro- 
 pean. 
 
 The Mohammedan sanctuaries with 
 their hideous stencil decorations and 
 bulbous domes are jostled by many new 
 shops with blinking fronts and German 
 merchandise. The orthodox turn their 
 faces toward Mecca while the enlight- 
 ened dream of a journey to Paris. Men 
 of title lately have made the pleasing dis- 
 covery that they may drink champagne 
 i 
 
and still be good Mussulmans. The red 
 slipper has been succeeded by the tan 
 gaiter. The voluminous breeches now 
 acknowledge the superior graces of inti- 
 mate English trousers. Frock-coats are 
 more conventional than beaded jackets. 
 The fez remains as a part of the insignia 
 of the old faith and hereditary devotion 
 to the Sick Man. 
 
 The generation of males which has been 
 extricating itself from the shackles of 
 Orientalism has not devoted much worry 
 to the Condition of Woman. 
 
 In Morovenia woman is still unliber- 
 ated. She does not dine at a palm-gar- 
 den or hop into a victoria on Thursday 
 afternoon to go to the meeting of a club 
 organized to propagate cults. If she 
 met a cult face to face she would not 
 recognize it. 
 
 Nor does she suspect, as she sits in heir 
 2 
 
prison apartment, peeping out through 
 the lattice at the monotonous drift of 
 the street life, that her sisters in far- 
 away Michigan are organizing and rais- 
 ing missionary funds in her behalf. 
 
 She does not read the dressmaking 
 periodicals. She never heard of the 
 Wednesday matinee. When she takes 
 the air she rides in a carriage that has a 
 sheltering hood, and she is veiled up to 
 the eyes, and she must never lean out to 
 wriggle her little finger-tips at men lol- 
 ling in front of the cafes. She must not 
 see the men. She may look at them, hut 
 she must not see them. No wonder the 
 sisters in Michigan are organizing to bat- 
 ter down the walls of tradition, and bring 
 to her the more recent privileges of her 
 sex! 
 
 Two years ago, when this story had its 
 real beginning, the social status of wo- 
 s 
 
man in Morovenia was not greatly differ- 
 ent from what it is to-day, or what it was 
 two centuries ago. 
 
 Woman had two important duties as- 
 signed to her. One was to hide herself 
 from the gaze of the multitude, and the 
 other was to be beautiful that is, fat. 
 A woman who was plump, or buxom, or 
 chubby might be classed as passably at- 
 tractive, but only the fat women were 
 irresistible. A woman weighing two 
 hundred pounds was only two-thirds as 
 beautiful as one weighing three hundred. 
 Those grading below one hundred and 
 fifty were verging upon the impossible. 
 
II 
 
 KALORA'S AFFLICTION 
 
 If it had been planned to make this an 
 old-fashioned discursive novel, say of the 
 Victor Hugo variety, the second chapter 
 would expend itself upon a philosophical 
 discussion of Fat and a sensational show- 
 ing of how and why the presence or 
 absence of adipose tissue, at certain im- 
 portant crises, had altered the destinies 
 of the whole race. 
 
 The subject offers vast possibilities. 
 It involves the physical attractiveness of 
 every woman in History &nd permits one 
 to speculate wildly as to what might have 
 happened if Cleopatra had weighed forty 
 pounds heavier, if Elizabeth had been a 
 gaunt and wiry creature, or if Joan of 
 5 
 
Iff SIMM 
 
 lllL-OLllVl 
 
 Arc had been so bulky that she could not 
 have fastened on her armor. 
 
 The soft layers which enshroud the 
 hard machinery of the human frame seem 
 to arrive in a merely incidental or acci- 
 dental sort of way. Yet once they have 
 arrived they exert a mysterious influence 
 over careers. Because of a mere change 
 in contour, many a queen has lost her 
 throne. It is a terrifying thought when 
 one remembers that fat so often comes 
 and so seldom goes. 
 
 It has been explained that in Moro- 
 venia, obesity and feminine beauty in- 
 creased in the same ratio. The woman 
 reigning in the hearts of men was the one 
 who could displace the most atmosphere. 
 
 Because of the fashionableness of fat, 
 Count Selim Malagaski, Governor-Gen- 
 eral of Morovenia, was very unhappy. 
 He had two daughters. One was fat; 
 6 
 
TtESL 
 
 one was thin. To be more explicit, one 
 was gloriously fat and the other was dis- 
 tressingly thin. 
 
 Jeneka was the name of the one who 
 had been blessed abundantly. Several of 
 the younger men in official circles, who 
 had seen Jeneka at a distance, when she 
 waddled to her carriage or turned side- 
 wise to enter a shop-door, had written 
 verses about her in which they compared 
 her to the blushing pomegranate, the ripe 
 melon, the luscious grape, and other veg- 
 etable luxuries more or less globular in 
 form. 
 
 No one had dedicated any verses to 
 Kalora. Kalora was the elder of the two. 
 She had come to the alarming age of 
 nineteen and no one had started in bid- 
 ding for her. 
 
 In court circles, where there is much 
 time for idle gossip, the most intimate 
 7 
 
mni TI s 
 SUM 
 
 secrets of an important household are 
 often bandied about when the black cof- 
 fee is being served. The marriageable 
 young men of Morovenia had learned of 
 the calamity in Count Malagaski's fam- 
 ily. They knew that Kalora weighed less 
 than one hundred and twenty pounds. 
 She was tall, lithe, slender, sinuous, wil- 
 lowy, hideous. The fact that poor old 
 Count Malagaski had made many unsuc- 
 cessful attempts to fatten her was a stock 
 subject for jokes of an unrefined and 
 Turkish character. 
 
 Whereas Jeneka would recline for 
 hours at a time on a shaded veranda, 
 munching sugary confections that were 
 loaded with nutritious nuts, Kalora 
 showed a far-western preference for 
 pickles and olives, and had been detected 
 several times in the act of bribing ser- 
 
vants to bring this contraband food into 
 the harem. 
 
 Worse still, she insisted upon taking 
 exercise. She loved to play romping 
 games within the high walls of the in- 
 closure where she and the other female 
 attaches of the royal household were kept 
 penned up. Her father coaxed, pleaded 
 and even threatened, but she refused to 
 lead the indolent life prescribed by cus- 
 tom; she scorned the sweet and heavy 
 foods which would enable her to expand 
 into loveliness; she persistently declined 
 to be fat. 
 
 Kalora's education was being directed 
 by a superannuated professor named 
 Popova. He was so antique and book- 
 wormy that none of the usual objections 
 urged against the male sex seemed to hold 
 good in his case, and he had the free run 
 
 9 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 of the palace. Count Selim Malagaski 
 trusted him implicitly. Popova fawned 
 upon the Governor-General, and seemed 
 slavish in his devotion. Secretly and 
 stealthily he was working out a frightful 
 vengeance upon his patron. Twenty 
 years before, Count Selim, in a moment 
 of anger, had called Popova a "Christian 
 dog." 
 
 In Morovenia it is flattery to call a man 
 a "liar." It is just the same as saying 
 to him, "You belong in the diplomatic 
 corps." It is no disgrace to be branded 
 as a thief, because all business transac- 
 tions are saturated with treachery. But 
 to call another a "Christian dog" is the 
 thirty-third degree of insult. 
 
 Popova writhed in spirit when he was 
 called "Christian," but he covered his 
 wrath and remained in the nobleman's 
 service and waited for his revenge. And 
 
 10 
 
LIM 
 
 now he was sacrificing the innocent Ka- 
 lora in order to punish the father. He 
 said to himself: "If she does not fatten, 
 then her father's heart will be broken, and 
 he will suffer even as I have suffered 
 from being called Christian." 
 
 It was Popova who, by guarded meth- 
 ods, encouraged her to violent exercise, 
 whereby she became as hard and trim as 
 an antelope. He continued to supply her 
 with all kinds of sour and biting foods 
 and sharp mineral waters, which are the 
 sworn enemies of any sebaceous condi- 
 tion. And now that she was nineteen* 
 almost at the further boundary of the 
 marrying age, and slimmer than ever be- 
 fore, he rejoiced greatly, for he had ac- 
 complished his deep and malign purpose, 
 and laid a heavy burden of sorrow upon 
 Count Selim Malagaski. 
 
 11 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CRUELTY OF LAW 
 
 If the father was worried by the pro- 
 longed crisis, the younger sister, Jeneka, 
 was well-nigh distracted, for she could 
 not hope to marry until Kalora had been 
 properly mated and sent away. 
 
 In Morovenia there is a very strict law 
 intended to eliminate the spinster from 
 the social horizon. It is a law born of 
 craft and inspired by foresight. The 
 daughters of a household must be married 
 off in the order of their nativity. The 
 younger sister dare not contemplate mat- 
 rimony until the elder sister has been led 
 to the altar. It is impossible for a young 
 and attractive girl to make a desirable 
 match leaving a maiden sister marooned 
 12 
 
*m the market. She must cooperate with 
 her parents and with the elder sister to 
 clear the way. 
 
 As a rule this law encourages earnest 
 getting- together in every household and re- 
 sults in a clearing up of the entire stock of 
 eligible daughters. But think of the un- 
 happy lot of an adorable and much-cov- 
 eted maiden who finds herself wedged in 
 behind something unattractive and shelf- 
 worn! Jeneka was thus pocketed. She 
 could do nothing except fold her hands 
 and patiently wait for some miraculous 
 intervention. 
 
 In Morovenia the discreet marrying 
 age is about sixteen. Jeneka was eigh- 
 teen still young enough and of a most 
 ravishing weight, but the slim princess 
 stood as a slight, yet seemingly insur- 
 mountable barrier between her and all 
 hopes of conventional happiness, 
 is 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 Count Malagaski did not know that the 
 shameful fact of Kalora's thinness was 
 being whispered among the young men 
 of Morovenia. When the daughters 
 were out for their daily carriage-ride both 
 w r ore flowing robes. In the case of Ka- 
 lora, this augmented costume was in- 
 tended to conceal the absence of noble 
 dimensions. 
 
 It is not good form in Morovenia for a 
 husband or father to discuss his home 
 life, or to show enthusiasm on the subject 
 of mere woman ; but the Count, prompted 
 by a fretful desire to dispose of his rap- 
 idly maturing offspring, often remarked 
 to the high-born young gentlemen of his 
 acquaintance that Kalora was a most re- 
 markable girl and one possessed of many 
 charms, leaving them to infer, if they 
 cared to do so, that possibly she weighed 
 at least one hundred and eighty pounds. 
 

TESLI 
 
 These casual comments did not seem to 
 arouse any burning curiosity among the 
 young men, and up to the day of Ka- 
 lora's nineteenth anniversary they had not 
 had the effect of bringing to the father 
 any of those guarded inquiries which, 
 under the oriental custom, are always pre- 
 liminary to an actual proposal of mar- 
 
 riage. 
 
 Count Selim Malagaski had a double 
 reason for wishing to see Kalora married. 
 While she remained at home he knew that 
 he would be second in authority. There 
 is an occidental misapprehension to the 
 eif ect that every woman beyond the bor- 
 ders of the Levant is a languorous and 
 waxen lily, floating in a milk- warm pool 
 of idleness. It is true that the women of 
 a household live in certain apartments 
 set aside as a "harem." But "harem" 
 literally means "forbidden" that is, for- 
 
 15 
 
bidden to the public, nothing more. 
 Every villa at Newport has a "harem." 
 
 The women of Morovenia do not pour 
 tea for men every afternoon, and they are 
 kept well under cover, but they are not 
 slaves. They do not inherit a nominal 
 authority, but very often they assume a 
 real authority. In the United States, 
 women can not sail a boat, and yet they 
 direct the cruise of the yacht. Railway 
 presidents can not vote in the Senate, and 
 yet they always know how the votes are 
 going to be cast. And in Morovenia, 
 many a clever woman, deprived of speci- 
 fied and legal rights, has learned to rule 
 man by those tactful methods which are 
 in such general use that they need not be 
 specified in this connection. 
 
 Kalora had a way of getting around 
 her father. After she had defied him 
 and put him into a stewing rage, she 
 16 
 
would smooth him the right way and, 
 with teasing little cajoleries, nurse him 
 back to a pleasant humor. He would 
 find himself once more at the starting- 
 place of the controversy, his stern com- 
 mands unheeded, and the disobedient 
 daughter laughing in his very face. 
 
 Thus, while he was ashamed of her 
 physical imperfections, he admired her 
 cleverness. Often he said to Popova: 
 "I tell you, she might make some man a 
 sprightly and entertaining companion, 
 even if she is slender." 
 
 Whereupon the crafty Popova would 
 reply: "Be patient, your Excellency. 
 We shall yet have her as round as a 
 dumpling." 
 
 And all the time he was keeping her 
 trained as fine as the proverbial fiddle. 
 
 17 
 
THE GARDEN PARTY 
 
 Said the Governor- General to himself 
 in that prime hour for wide-awake medi- 
 tation the one just before arising for 
 breakfast: "She is not all that she 
 should be, and yet, millions of women 
 have been less than perfect and most of 
 them have married." 
 
 He looked hard at the ceiling for a full 
 minute and then murmured, "Even men 
 have their shortcomings." 
 
 This declaration struck him as being 
 sinful and almost infidel in its radicalism, 
 and yet it seemed to open the way to a 
 logical reason why some titled bachelor 
 of damaged reputation and tottering 
 finances might balance his poor 
 18 
 
against a dowry and a social position, 
 even though he would be compelled to 
 figure Kalora into the bargain. 
 
 It must be known that the Governor- 
 General was now simply looking for a 
 husband for Kalora. He did not hope 
 to top the market or bring down any no- 
 table catch. He favored any alliance 
 that would result in no discredit to his 
 noble lineage. 
 
 "At present they do not even nibble/' 
 he soliloquized, still looking at the ceil- 
 ing. "They have taken fright for some 
 reason. They may have an inkling of 
 the awful truth. She is nineteen. Next 
 year she will be twenty the year after 
 that twenty-one. Then it would be too 
 late. A desperate experiment is better 
 than inaction. I have much to gain and 
 nothing to lose. I must exhibit Kalora. 
 I shall bring the young men to her. 
 19 
 
Some of them may take a fancy to her. 
 I have seen people eat sugar on tomatoes 
 and pepper on ice-cream. There may be 
 in Morovenia one one would be suffi- 
 cient one bachelor who is no stickler 
 for full-blown loveliness. I may find a 
 man who has become inoculated with 
 western heresies and believes that a wo- 
 man with intellect is desirable, even 
 though under weight. I may find a fool, 
 or an aristocrat who has gambled. I may 
 stumble upon good fortune if I put her 
 out among the young men. Yes, I must 
 exhibit her, but how how?" 
 
 He began reaching into thin air for a 
 pretext and found one. The inspiration 
 was simple and satisfying. 
 
 He would give a garden-party in honor 
 of Mr. Rawley Plumston, the British 
 Consul. Of course he would have to in- 
 vite Mrs. Plumston and then, out of 
 
 20 
 
deference to European custom, he would 
 have his two daughters present. It was 
 only by the use of imported etiquette 
 that he could open the way to direct 
 courtship. 
 
 Possibly some of the cautious young 
 noblemen would talk with Kalora, and, 
 finding her bright-eyed, witty, ready in 
 conversation and with enthusiasm for big 
 and masculine undertakings, be attracted 
 to her. At the same time her father de- 
 cided that there was no reason why her 
 pitiful shortage of avoirdupois should be 
 candidly advertised. Even at a garden- 
 party, where the guests of honor are two 
 English subjects, the young women 
 would be required to veil themselves up 
 to the nose-tips and hide themselves 
 within a veritable cocoon of soft gar- 
 ments. 
 
 The invitations went out and the ac- 
 21 
 
mm 
 
 ceptances came in. The English were 
 flattered. Count Malagaski was buoyed 
 by new hopes and the daughters were in 
 a day-and-night flutter, for neither of 
 them had ever come within speaking dis- 
 tance of the real young man of their 
 dreams. 
 
 On the morning of the day set apart 
 for the debut of Kalora, Count Selim 
 went to her apartments, and, with a 
 rather shamefaced reluctance, gave his di- 
 rections. 
 
 "Kalora, I have done all for you that 
 any father could do for a beloved child 
 and you are still thin," he began. 
 
 "Slender," she corrected. 
 
 "Thin," he repeated. "Thin as a crane 
 a mere shadow of a girl and, what is 
 more deplorable, apparently indifferent 
 to the sorrow that you are causing those 
 most interested in your welfare." 
 
 22 
 
THE SUM 
 
 "I am not indifferent, father. If, 
 merely by wishing, I could be fat, I would 
 make myself the shape of the French bal- 
 loon that floated over Morovenia last 
 week. I would be so roly-poly that, when 
 it came time for me to go and meet our 
 guests this afternoon, I would roll into 
 their presence as if I were a tennis- 
 ball." 
 
 "Why should you know anything about 
 tennis-balls? You, of all the young 
 women in Morovenia, seem to be the only 
 one with a fondness for athletics. I 
 have heard that in Great Britain, where 
 the women ride and play rude, manly 
 games, there has been developed a breed 
 as hard as flint Allah preserve me from 
 such women!" 
 
 "Father, you are leading up to some- 
 thing. What is it you wish to say?" 
 
 "This. You have persistently dis- 
 
 23 
 
obeyed me and made me very unhappy, 
 but to-day I must ask you to respect my 
 wishes. Do not proclaim to our guests 
 the sad truth regarding your deficiency." 
 
 "Good!" she exclaimed gaily. "I shall 
 wear a robe the size of an Arabian tent, 
 and I shall surround myself with soft pil- 
 lows, and I shall wheeze when I breathe 
 and who knows? perhaps some dark- 
 eyed young man worth a million piasters 
 will be deceived, and will come to you to- 
 morrow, and buy me buy me at so much 
 a pound." And she shrieked with laugh- 
 ter. 
 
 "Stop!" commanded her father. "You 
 refuse to take me seriously, but I am in 
 earnest. Do not humiliate me in the 
 presence of my friends this afternoon." 
 
 Then he hurried away before she had 
 time to make further sport of him. 
 
 To Count Selim Malagaski this gar- 
 
 24 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 den-party was the frantic effort of a 
 sinking man. To Kalora it was a lark. 
 From the pure fun of the thing, she 
 obeyed her father. She wore four heav- 
 ily quilted and padded gowns, one over 
 another, and when she and Jeneka were 
 summoned from their apartments and 
 went out to meet the company under the 
 trees, they were almost like twins and both 
 duck-like in general outlines. 
 
 First they met Mrs. Rawley Plumston, 
 a very tall, bony and dignified woman in 
 gray, wearing a most flowery hat. To 
 every man of Morovenia Mrs. Plumston 
 was the apotheosis of all that was unde- 
 sirable in her sex, but they were exceed- 
 ingly polite to her, for the reason that 
 Morovenia owed a great deal of money 
 in London and it was a set policy to cul- 
 tivate the friendship of the British. 
 
 While Jeneka and Kalora were being 
 
 25 
 
presented to the consul's wife, these same 
 young men, the very flower of bachelor- 
 hood, stood back at a respectful distance 
 and regarded the young women with half - 
 concealed curiosity. To be permitted to 
 inspect young women of the upper 
 classes was a most unusual privilege, and 
 they knew why the privilege had been ex- 
 tended to them. It was all very amusing, 
 but they were too well bred to betray 
 their real emotions. When they moved 
 up to be presented to the sisters they 
 seemed grave in their salutations and re- 
 strained themselves, even though one pair 
 of eyes, peering out above a very gauzy 
 veil, seemed to twinkle with mischief and 
 to corroborate their most pronounced sus- 
 picions. 
 
 Out of courtesy to his guests, Count 
 Malagaski had made his garden-party as 
 deadly dull as possible. Little groups of 
 26 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 bored people drifted about under the trees 
 and exchanged the usual commonplace 
 observations. Tea and cakes were served 
 under a canopy tent and the local orches- 
 tra struggled with pagan music. 
 
 Kalora found herself in a wide and 
 easy kind of a basket-chair sitting under a 
 tree and chatting with Mrs. Plumston. 
 She was trying to be at her ease, and all 
 the time she knew that every young man 
 present was staring at her out of the cor- 
 ner of his eye. 
 
 Mrs. Plumston, although very tall and 
 evidently of brawny strength, had a twit- 
 tering little voice and a most confiding 
 manner. She was immensely interested 
 in the daughter of the Governor- General. 
 To meet a young girl who had spent her 
 life within the mysterious shadows of an 
 oriental household gave her a tingling in- 
 terest, the same as reading a forbidden 
 27 
 
book. She readily won the confidence of 
 Kalora, and Kalora, being most ingenu- 
 ous and not educated to the wiles of the 
 drawing-room, spoke her thoughts with 
 the utmost candor. 
 
 "I like you," she said to Mrs. Plums- 
 ton, "and, oh, how I envy you! You go 
 to balls and dinners and the theater, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "Alas, yes, and you escape them! 
 How I envy you!" 
 
 "Your husband is a very handsome 
 man. Do you love him?" 
 
 "I tolerate him." 
 
 "Does he ever scold you for being 
 thin?" 
 
 "Does he what?" 
 
 "Is he ever angry with you because you 
 are not big and plump and and 
 pulpy?" 
 
 "Heavens, no! If my husband has 
 
 28 
 
any private convictions regarding my 
 personal appearance, he is discreet enough 
 to keep them to himself. If he isn't sat- 
 isfied with me, he should be. I have been 
 working for years to save myself from 
 becoming fat and plump and pulpy." 
 
 "Then you don't think fat women are 
 beautiful?" 
 
 "My child, in all enlightened countries 
 adipose is woman's worst enemy. If I 
 were a fat woman, and a man said that 
 he loved me, I should know that he was 
 after my bank-account. Take my ad- 
 vice, my dear young lady, and bant." 
 
 "Bant?" 
 
 "Reduce. Make yourself slender. 
 You have beautiful eyes, beautiful hair, 
 a perfect complexion, and with a trim 
 figure you would be simply incompar- 
 able." 
 
 Kalora listened, trembling with sur- 
 29 
 
prise and pleasure. Then she leaned over 
 and took the hand of the gracious Eng- 
 lishwoman. 
 
 "I have a confession to make," she 
 said in a whisper. "I am not fat I am 
 slim quite slim." 
 
 And then, at that moment, something 
 happened to make this whole story worth 
 telling. It was a little something, but it 
 was the beginning of many strange ex- 
 periences, for it broke up the wonderful 
 garden-party in the grounds of the Gov- 
 ernor-General, and it gave Morovenia 
 something to talk about for many weeks 
 to come. It all came about as follows : 
 
 At the military club, the night before 
 the party, a full score of young men, rep- 
 resenting the quality, sat at an oblong 
 table and partook of refreshments not 
 sanctioned by the Prophet. They were 
 young men of registered birth and sup- 
 so 
 
TIES! 
 
 posititious breeding, even though most of 
 them had very little head back of the ears 
 and wore the hair clipped short and were 
 big of bone, like work-horses, and had the 
 gusty manners of the camp. 
 
 They were foolishly gloating over the 
 prospect of meeting the two daughters of 
 the Governor-General, and were telling 
 what they knew about them with much 
 freedom, for, even in a monarchy, the 
 chief executive and his family are public 
 property and subject to the censorship of 
 any one who has a voice for talking. 
 
 Of these male gossips there were a few 
 who said, with gleeful certainty, that the 
 elder daughter was a mere twig who could 
 hide within the shadow of her bounteous 
 and incomparable sister. 
 
 "Wait until to-morrow and you shall 
 see," they said, wagging their heads very 
 wisely. 
 
To-morrow had come and with it the 
 party and here was Kalora a pretty face 
 peering out from a great pod of clothes* 
 
 They stood back and whispered and 
 guessed, until one, more enterprising than 
 the others, suggested a bold experiment 
 to set all doubts at rest. 
 
 Count Malagaski had provided a di- 
 version for his guests. A company of 
 Arabian acrobats, on their way from 
 Constantinople to Paris, had been inter- 
 cepted, and were to give an exhibition of 
 leaping and pyramid-building at one end 
 of the garden. While Kalora was chat- 
 ting with Mrs. Plumston, the acrobats 
 had entered and, throwing off their yel- 
 low-and-black striped gowns, were pre- 
 paring for the feats. They were behind 
 the two women and at the far end of the 
 garden. Mrs. Plumston and Kalora 
 would have to move to the other side of the 
 
 32 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 tree in order to witness the exhibition. 
 This fact gave the devil-may-care young 
 bachelors a ready excuse. 
 
 "Do as I have directed and you shall 
 learn for yourselves," said the one who 
 had invented the tactics. "I tell you that 
 what you see is all shell. Now then " 
 
 Four conspirators advanced in a half- 
 careless and sauntering manner to where 
 Kalora and the consul's wife sat by the 
 sheltering tree, intent upon their ex- 
 change of secrets. 
 
 "Pardon me, Mrs. Plumston, but the 
 acrobats are about to begin," said one of 
 the young men, touching the fez with his 
 forefinger. 
 
 "Oh, really?" she exclaimed, looking 
 up. "We must see them." 
 
 "You must face the other way," said 
 the young man. "They are at the east 
 end of the garden. Permit us." 
 
 S3 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 Whereupon the young man who had 
 spoken and a companion who stood at his 
 side very gently picked up Mrs. Plums- 
 ton's big basket-chair between them and 
 carried it around to the other side of the 
 tree. And the two young men who had 
 been waiting just behind picked up Ka- 
 lora's chair and carried Tier to the other 
 side of the tree, and put her down beside 
 the consul's wife. 
 
 Did they carry her? No, they dandled 
 her. She was as light as a feather for 
 these two young giants of the military. 
 They made a palpable show of the ridicu- 
 lous ease with which they could lift their 
 burden. It may have been a forward 
 thing to do, but they had done it with 
 courtly politeness, and the consul's wife, 
 instead of being annoyed, was pleased 
 and smiling over the very pretty little at- 
 tention, for she could not know at the mo- 
 84 
 
I 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 ment that the whole maneuver had grown 
 out of a wager and was part of a detest- 
 able plan to find out the actual weight 
 of the Governor- General's elder daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 If Mrs. Plumston did not understand, 
 Count Selim Malagaski understood. So 
 did all the young men who were watching 
 the pantomime. And Kalora under- 
 stood. She looked up and saw the lurk- 
 ing smiles on the faces of the two gal- 
 lants who were carrying her, and later the 
 tittering became louder and some of the 
 young men laughed aloud. 
 
 She leaped from her chair and turned 
 upon her two tormentors. 
 
 "How dare you?" she exclaimed. 
 "You are making sport of me in the 
 presence of my father's guests! You 
 have a contempt for me because I am 
 ugly. You mock at me in private be- 
 
 35 
 
man 
 
 cause you hear that I am thin. You wish 
 to learn the truth about me. Well, I will 
 tell you. I am thin. I weigh one hun- 
 dred and eighteen pounds." 
 
 She was speaking loudly and defiantly, 
 and all the young men were backing 
 away, dismayed at the outbreak. Her 
 father elbowed his way among them, 
 white with terror, and attempted to pac- 
 ify her. 
 
 "Be still, my child!" he commanded. 
 "You don't know what you are saying!" 
 
 "Yes, I do know what I am saying!" 
 she persisted, her voice rising shrilly. 
 "Do they wish to know about me? Must 
 they know the truth? Then look! 
 Look!" 
 
 With sweeping outward gestures she 
 
 threw off the soft quilted robes gathered 
 
 about her, tore away the veil and stood 
 
 before them in a white gown that fairly 
 
 36 
 
TESL1M 
 
 revealed every modified in-and-out of her 
 figure. 
 
 What ensued? Is it necessary to tell? 
 The costume in which she stood forth was 
 no more startling or immodest than the 
 simple gown which the American high- 
 school girl wears on her Commencement 
 Day, and it was decidedly more ample 
 than the sum of all the garments worn at 
 polite social gatherings in communities 
 somewhat to the west. Nevertheless, the 
 company stood aghast. They were 
 doubly horrified first, at the effrontery 
 of the girl, and second, at the revelation 
 of her real person, for they saw that she 
 was doomed, helpless, bereft of hope, slim 
 beyond all curing. 
 
HE ARRIVES 
 
 Kalora was alone. 
 
 After putting the company to con- 
 sternation she had flung herself defiantly 
 back into the chair and directed a most; 
 contemptuous gaze at all the desirable 
 young men of her native land. 
 
 The Governor- General made a choking 
 attempt to apologize and explain, and 
 then, groping for an excuse to send the 
 people away, suggested that the company 
 view the new stables. The acrobats 
 were dismissed. The guests went rapidly 
 to an inspection of the carriages and 
 horses. They were glad to escape. 
 Jeneka, crushed in spirit and shamed at 
 the brazen performance of her sister, be- 
 
 38 
 
mroiH 
 uLlM 
 
 gan a plaintive conjecture as to "what 
 people would say," when Kalora turned 
 upon her such a tigerish glance that she 
 fairly ran for her apartment, although 
 she was too corpulent for actual sprint- 
 ing. Mrs. Plumston remained behind as 
 the only comforter. 
 
 "It was a most contemptible proceed- 
 ing, my child. When they lifted us and 
 carried us to the other side of the tree I 
 thought it was rather nice of them; 
 something on the order of the old Walter 
 Raleigh days of chivalry, and all that. 
 And just think ! The beasts did it to find 
 out whether or not you were really plump 
 and heavy. It's a most extraordinary in- 
 cident." 
 
 "I wouldn't marry one of them now, 
 not if he begged and my father com- 
 manded!" said Kalora bitterly. "And 
 poor Jeneka! This takes away her last 
 39 
 
chance. Until I am married she can not 
 marry, and after to-day not even a blind 
 man would choose me." 
 
 "For goodness' sake, don't worry! 
 You tell me you are nineteen. No woman 
 need feel discouraged until she is about 
 thirty-five. You have sixteen years 
 ahead of you." 
 
 "Not in Morovenia." 
 "Why remain in Morovenia?" 
 "We are not permitted to travel." 
 "Perhaps, after what happened to-day, 
 your father will be glad to let you travel," 
 said Mrs. Plumston with a significant lit- 
 tle nod and a wise squint. "Don't you 
 generally succeed in having your own 
 way with him?" 
 
 "Oh, to travel to travel!" exclaimed 
 Kalora, clasping her hands. "If I am to 
 remain single and a burden for ever, per- 
 haps it would lighten father's grief if I 
 
 40 
 
HE SLIM 
 
 resided far away. My presence certainly 
 would remind him of the wreck of all his 
 ambitions, but if I should settle down in 
 Vienna or Paris, or " she paused and 
 gave a little gasp "or if anything should 
 happen to me, if I should should disap- 
 pear, that is, really disappear, Jeneka 
 would be free to marry and ' 
 
 "Oh, pickles!" said Mrs. Plumston. 
 "I have heard of romantic young women 
 jumping overboard and taking poison on 
 account of rich young men, but I never 
 heard of a girl's snuffing herself out so as 
 to give her sister a chance to get mar- 
 ried. The thing for you to do at a time 
 like this, when you find yourself in a tan- 
 gle, is to think of yourself and your own 
 chances for happiness. Father and Je- 
 neka will take care of themselves. They 
 are popular and beloved characters here 
 in Morovenia. They are not taking you 
 
 41 
 
THE SUM 
 
 into consideration except as you seem to 
 interfere with their selfish plans. I have 
 made it a rule not to work out my neigh- 
 bor's destiny." 
 
 "What can I do?" asked Kalora, seem- 
 ingly impressed by the earnestness of the 
 consul's wife. 
 
 "Leave Morovenia. Keep at your 
 father until he consents to your going. 
 Here you are despised and ridiculed a 
 victim of heathen prejudice left over 
 from the Dark Ages. Get away, even if 
 you have to walk, and take my word for 
 it, the moment you leave Morovenia you 
 will be a very beautiful girl; not a merely 
 attractive young person, but what we 
 would call at home a radiant beauty the 
 oriental type, you know. And as a per- 
 sonal favor to me, don't be fat." 
 
 "No fear of that," said the girl with a 
 
melancholy attempt at a smile. "But 
 you must go and join the others. Do, 
 please. I am now in disgrace, and you 
 may compromise your social standing in 
 Morovenia if you remain here and talk 
 to me." 
 
 "I dare say I should go. I have a hus- 
 band who requires as much attention and 
 scolding as a four-year-old. Sometimes 
 I almost favor the oriental system of the 
 husband's directing the wife. Good-by." 
 
 "Good-by." 
 
 Mrs. Plumston gave her a kiss and a 
 friendly little pat on the arm, and walked 
 away toward the stables with a swinging, 
 heel-and-toe, masculine stride. 
 
 Kalora had the whole garden to her- 
 self. She sat squared up in the wicker 
 chair with her fists clenched, looking 
 straight ahead, trying in vain to think of 
 
some plan for avenging herself upon the 
 whole race of bachelors. As she sat thus 
 some one spoke to her. 
 
 "How do you do?" came a voice. 
 
 She was startled and looked about, but 
 saw no one. 
 
 "Up here!" came the voice again. 
 
 She looked up and saw a young man 
 on the top of the wall, his legs hanging 
 over. Evidently he had climbed up from 
 the outside, and yet Kalora had never 
 suspected that the wall could be climbed. 
 
 He was smoothly shaven, with blond 
 hair almost ripe enough to be auburn; he 
 wore a gray suit of rather loose and care- 
 less material, a belt, but no waistcoat; his 
 trousers were reefed up from a pair of 
 saddle-brown shoes, and the silk band 
 around his small straw hat was tricolor ed. 
 In his hand was a paper-covered book. 
 S wung over his shoulder was a camera in 
 
 44 
 
Up here ! " came the voice again 
 
TESLI 
 
 a leather case. He sat there on top of 
 the high wall and gazed at Kalora with a 
 grinning interest, and she, forgetting that 
 she was unveiled and clad only in the sim- 
 ple garments which had horrified the best 
 people of Morovenia, gazed back at him, 
 for he was the first of the kind she had 
 seen. 
 
 "What are you doing here?" she asked 
 wonderingly. 
 
 "I am looking for the show," he replied. 
 "They told me down at the hotel that a 
 very hot bunch of acrobats were doing 
 a few stunts down here this afternoon, 
 and I thought I'd break in if I could. 
 Wanted to get some pictures of them." 
 
 "Were you invited?" 
 
 "No, but that doesn't make any differ- 
 ence. In Cairo I went to a native wed- 
 ding every day. If I passed a house 
 where there was a wedding being pulled 
 
 45 
 
TESLi 
 
 off, I simply went inside and mingled. 
 They never put me out seemed to enjoy 
 having me there. I suppose they 
 thought it was the American custom for 
 outsiders to ring in at a wedding." 
 
 "You said American, didn't you? Are 
 you from America?" 
 
 "Do I look like a Scandinavian? I 
 am from the grand old commonwealth of 
 Pennsylvania. Did you ever hear of the 
 town of Bessemer?" 
 
 "I'm afraid not." 
 
 "Did you ever hear of the Pike family 
 that robbed all the orphans, tore down 
 the starry banner, walked on the humble 
 working-girl and gave the double cross to 
 the common people? Did you?" 
 
 "Dear me, no," she replied, following 
 him vaguely. 
 
 "Well, I am Alexander H., of the tribe 
 of Pike, and I have two reasons for being 
 46 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 in your beautiful little city. One is Fed- 
 eral grand jury and the other is ten-cent 
 magazine. You know, our folks are sin- 
 fully rich. About four years ago I came 
 in for most of the guvnor's coin, and in 
 trying to keep up the traditions of the 
 family, I have made myself unpopular, 
 but I didn't know how unpopular I really 
 was until I got this magazine from home 
 this morning." And he held up the pa- 
 per-covered book, which had a rainbow 
 cover. "They have been writing up a 
 few of us captains of industry, and they 
 have said everything about me that they 
 could say without having the thing barred 
 out of the mails. I notice that you speak 
 our kind of talk fairly well, but I think 
 I can take you by the hand and show you 
 a lot of new and beautiful English lan- 
 guage. I will read this to you." 
 
 Before she could warn him, or do any- 
 47 
 
TKSLi 
 
 thing except let out a horrified "Oh-h!" 
 he had leaped lightly from his high perch 
 and was standing in front of her. 
 
 "I'm afraid you don't understand," 
 she said, rising and taking a frightened 
 survey of the garden, to be sure that no 
 one was watching. "Strangers are not 
 permitted in here. That is, men, and 
 more especially ah Christians." 
 
 "I'm not a Christian, and I can prove it 
 by this magazine. I am an octopus, and 
 a viper, and a vampire, and a man-eating 
 shark. I am what you might call a com- 
 posite zoo. If you want to get a line on 
 me just read this article on The Shame- 
 less Brigand of Bessemer, and you will 
 certainly find out that I am a nice young 
 fellow." 
 
 Kalora had studied English for years 
 and thought she knew it, and yet she 
 found it difficult fully to comprehend 
 
 48 
 
all the figurative phrases of this pleasing 
 young stranger. 
 
 "Do I understand that you are travel- 
 ing abroad because of your unpopularity 
 at home?" she asked. 
 
 "I am waiting for things to cool down. 
 As soon as the muck-rakers wear out their 
 rakes, and the great American public finds 
 some other kind of hysterics to keep it 
 worked up to a proper temperature, I 
 shall mosey back and resume business at 
 the old stand. But why tell you the story 
 of my life? Play fair now, and tell me 
 a lot about yourself. Where am I?" 
 
 "You are here in my father's private 
 garden, where you have no right to be." 
 
 "And father?" 
 
 "Is Count Selim Malagaski, Governor- 
 General of Morovenia." 
 
 "Wow! And you?" 
 
 "I am his daughter." 
 49 
 
IE sn 
 
 "The daughter of all that must be 
 something. Have you a title?" 
 
 "I am called Princess." 
 
 "Can you beat that? Climb up a wall 
 to see some A-rabs perform, and find a 
 real, sure-enough princess, and likewise, 
 if you don't mind my saying so, a pip- 
 pin." 
 
 "I don't know what you mean," .she 
 said. 
 
 "A corker." 
 
 "Corker?" 
 
 "I mean that you're a good-looker 
 that it's no labor at all to gaze right at 
 you. I didn't think they grew them so 
 far from headquarters, but I see I'm 
 wrong. You are certainly all right. 
 Pardon me for saying this to you so soon 
 after we meet, but I have learned that 
 you will never break a woman's heart by 
 telling her that she is a beaut." 
 
 50 
 
mOT T1F 
 SUM 
 
 Kalora leaned back in her chair and 
 laughed. She was beginning to compre- 
 hend the whimsical humor of the very 
 unusual young man. His direct and 
 playful manner of speech amused her, 
 and also seemed to reassure her. And, 
 when he seated himself within a few in- 
 ches of her elbow, fanning himself with 
 the little straw hat, and calmly inspecting 
 the tiny landscape of the forbidden gar- 
 den, she made no protest against his fa- 
 miliarity, although she knew that she was 
 violating the most sacred rules laid down 
 for her sex. 
 
 She reasoned thus with herself : 
 
 "To-day I have disgraced myself to 
 the utmost, and, since I am utterly 
 shamed, why not revel in my lawlessness?" 
 
 Besides, she wished to question this 
 young man. Mrs. Plumston had said to 
 her: "You are beautiful." No one else 
 
 51 
 
had ever intimated such a thing. In fact, 
 for five years she had been taunted almost 
 daily because of her lack of all physical 
 charms. Perhaps she could learn the 
 truth about herself by some adroit ques- 
 tioning of the young man from Pennsyl- 
 vania. 
 
 "You have traveled a great deal?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Me and Baedeker and Cook wrote it," 
 he replied; and then, seeing that she was 
 puzzled, he said: "I have been to all of 
 the places they keep open." 
 
 "You have seen many women in many 
 countries?" 
 
 "I have. I couldn't help it, and I'm 
 glad of it." 
 
 "Then you know what constitutes 
 beauty?" 
 
 "Not always. What is sponge cake 
 for me may be sawdust for somebody 
 
 52 
 
else. Say, I rode for an hour in a 'rick- 
 shaw at Nagoya to see the most beautiful 
 girl in Japan and when we got to the tea- 
 house they trotted out a little shrimp that 
 looked as if she'd been dried over a barrel 
 you know, stood bent all the time, as if 
 she was getting ready to jump. Her 
 neck was no bigger than a gripman's 
 wrist and she had a nose that stood right 
 out from her face almost an eighth of an 
 inch. Her eyes were set on the bias and 
 she was painted more colors than a band- 
 wagon. I said, 'If this is the champion 
 geisha, take me back to the land of the 
 chorus girl.' And in China! Listen! 
 I caught a Chinese belle coming down the 
 Queen's Road in Hong- Kong one day, 
 and I ran up an alley. I have seen Pa- 
 risian beauties that had a coat of white 
 veneering over them an inch thick, and 
 out here in this country I have seen so- 
 
 53 
 
man 
 
 called cracker- jacks that ought to be 
 doing the mountain-of -flesh act in the 
 Ringling side-show. So there you are!" 
 
 "But in your own country, and in the 
 larger cities of the world, there must be 
 some sort of standard. What are the re- 
 quirements? What must a woman be, 
 that all men would call her beautiful?" 
 
 "Well, Princess, that's a pretty hard 
 proposition to dope out. Good looks can 
 not be analyzed in a lab or worked out by 
 algebra, because, I'm telling you, the one 
 that may look awful lucky to me may 
 strike somebody else as being fairly punk. 
 Providence framed it up that way so as 
 to give more girls a chance to land some- 
 body. Still, there is one kind that makes 
 a hit wherever people are bright enough 
 to sit up and take notice. Now I sup- 
 pose that any male being in his right 
 senses would find it easy to look at 
 
 54 
 
a woman who was young enough and 
 had eyes and hair and teeth and the other 
 items, all doing team-work together, and 
 then if she was trim and slender " 
 
 "Should she be slender?" interrupted 
 Kalora, leaning toward him. 
 
 "Sure. I don't mean the same width 
 all the way up and down, like an art stu- 
 dent, but trim and Here, I'll show 
 you. You will find the pictures of the 
 most beautiful women in the world right 
 here in the ads of a ten-cent magazine. 
 Look them over and you will understand 
 what I mean." 
 
 He turned page after page and showed 
 her the tapering goddesses of the straight 
 front, the tooth-powder, the camera, the 
 breakfast-food, the massage-cream, and 
 the hair-tonic. 
 
 "These are what you call beautiful 
 women?" she asked. 
 
 55 
 
"These are about the limit." 
 
 "Then in your country I would not be 
 considered hideous, would I?" 
 
 "Hideous? Say, if you ever walked 
 up Fifth Avenue you would block the 
 traffic! And in the palm- garden at the 
 Waldorf why, you and the head waiter 
 would own the place! Are you trying to 
 string me by asking such questions? Are 
 you a real ingenue, or a kidder?" 
 
 "I hardly know what you mean, but I 
 assure you that here in Morovenia they 
 laugh at me because I am not fat." 
 
 "This is a shine country, and you're in 
 wrong, little girl," said Mr. Pike, in a 
 kindly tone. "Why don't you duck?" 
 
 "Duck?" 
 
 "Leave here and hunt up some of the 
 
 red spots on the map. You know what 
 
 I mean away to the bright lights! I 
 
 don't like to knock your native land but, 
 
 56 
 
Tit SUM 
 
 honestly, Morovenia is a bad boy. I've 
 struck towns around here where you 
 couldn't buy illustrated post-cards. They 
 take in the sidewalks at nine o'clock every 
 night. That orchestra down at the hotel 
 handed me a new coon song last night 
 Bill Bailey! Can you beat that? As 
 long as you stay here you are hooked up 
 with a funeral." 
 
 Kalora, with wrinkled brow, had been 
 striving to follow him in his figurative 
 flights. 
 
 "Strange," she murmured. "You are 
 the second person I have met to-day who 
 advises me to go away to the west." 
 
 "That's the tip!" he exclaimed with fer- 
 vor. "Go west and when you start, keep 
 on going. You come to America and 
 bring along the papers to show that you're 
 a real live princess and you'll own both 
 sides of the street. We'll show you more 
 57 
 
real excitement in two weeks than you'll 
 see around here if you live to be a hun- 
 dred." 
 
 "I should like to go, but Look! 
 Hurry, please! You must go!" 
 
 She pointed, and young Mr. Pike 
 turned to see two guards in baggy uni- 
 forms bearing down upon him, their eyes 
 bulging with amazement. 
 
 "Shall I try to put up a bluff, or fight 
 it out?" he asked, as he stood up to meet 
 them. 
 
 "You can not explain," gasped Kalora. 
 "Run! Run! They know you have no 
 right here. This means going to prison 
 perhaps worse." 
 
 "Does it?" he asked, between his 
 set teeth. "If those two brunettes get 
 me, they'll have to go some." 
 
 When the two pounced upon him he 
 made no resistance and they captured 
 
him. He stood between them, each of 
 them clutching an arm and breathing 
 heavily, not only from exertion, but alsa 
 out of a sense of triumph 
 
VI 
 
 HE DEPARTS 
 
 And now, in order to give a key to the 
 surprising performances of Alexander 
 H. Pike, it will be necessary to call up 
 certain biographical data. 
 
 When he was in the Hill School he won 
 the pole vault, but later, in his real colle- 
 giate days, he never could come within two 
 inches of Varsity form, and therefore 
 failed to make the track-team. 
 
 While attending the Institute of Tech- 
 nology he worked one whole autumn to 
 perfect an offensive play which was to be 
 used against "Buff" Rodigan, of the 
 semi-professional athletic-club team. 
 This play was known as "giving the 
 shoulder," with the solar plexus as the 
 60 
 
point of attack. The purpose of the play 
 was not to kill the opposing player, but 
 to induce him to relinquish all interest in 
 the contest. 
 
 Furthermore, Mr. Pike, while spending 
 a month or more at a time in New York 
 City, during his post-graduate days, had 
 worked with Mr. Mike Donovan, in order 
 to keep down to weight. Mr. Donovan 
 had illustrated many tricks to him, one of 
 the best being a low feint with the left, 
 followed by a right cross to the point of 
 the jaw. 
 
 While the two bronze-colored guards 
 stood holding him, Mr. Pike rapidly took 
 stock of his accomplishments, and formu- 
 lated a program. With a sudden twist he 
 cleared himself, sprang away from the 
 two, and jumped behind a tree. One 
 soldier started to the right of the tree and 
 the other to the left, so as to close in upon 
 61 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 him and retake him. This was what he 
 wanted, for he had them "spread," and 
 could deal with them singly. 
 
 He used the Donovan tactics on the 
 first guard, and they worked out with 
 shameful ease. When the soldier saw the 
 left coming for the pit of his stomach, 
 he crouched and hugged himself, thereby 
 extending his jaw so that it waited there 
 with the sun shining on it until the young 
 man's right swing came across and 
 changed the middle of the afternoon to 
 midnight. Number one was lying in pro- 
 found slumber when Alumnus Pike 
 turned to greet number two. 
 
 The second soldier, having witnessed 
 the feat of pugilism, doubled his fists and 
 extended them awkwardly, coming with 
 a rush. Mr. Pike suddenly squatted and 
 leaned forward, balancing on his finger- 
 tips, until number two was about to fall 
 62 
 
upon him and crush him, and then he arose 
 with that rigid right shoulder aimed as a 
 catapult. There was a sound as when the 
 air-brake is disconnected, and number 
 two curled over limply on the ground and 
 made faces in an effort to resume breath- 
 ing. 
 
 Mr. Pike picked up his magazine and 
 put it under his coat. He buttoned the 
 coat, smiled in a pale, but placid manner 
 at Kalora, who was still immovable with 
 terror, and then he proceeded to vindicate 
 his "prep school" training. He ran over 
 to the canopy tent, under which the re- 
 freshments had been served, pulled out 
 one of the poles and, pointing it ahead of 
 him, ran straight for the wall. 
 
 Kalora, watching him, regarded this as 
 a wholly insane proceeding. Was he go- 
 ing to attempt to poke a hole through a 
 wall three feet thick? 
 63 
 
TTESLi 
 
 Just as he seemed ready to flatten him- 
 self against the stones, he dropped the 
 end of the pole to the ground and shot 
 upward like a rocket. Kalora saw him 
 give an upward twist and wriggle, fling 
 himself free from the pole and disappear 
 on the other side of the wall, the camera 
 following like the tail of a comet. As he 
 did so, number two, coming to a sitting 
 posture, began to shriek for reinforce- 
 ments. Number one was up on his el- 
 bow, regarding the affairs of this world 
 with a dreamy interest. 
 
 Fortunately for the Governor-General, 
 the participants in the exploded garden- 
 party had escaped at the very first op- 
 portunity. 
 
 Count Malagaski, greatly perturbed 
 and almost in a state of collapse over the 
 unhappy affair in the garden, was return- 
 ing to his apartments when the second sur- 
 64 
 
TIOLIM 
 
 prising episode of the day came to a 
 noisy climax. 
 
 He heard the uproar and had the two 
 guards brought before him. They re- 
 ported that they had found a stranger in 
 the garb of an infidel seated within the se- 
 cret garden chatting with the Princess 
 Kalora. They did not agree in their de- 
 scriptions of him, but each maintained 
 that the intruder was a very large person 
 of forbidding appearance and terrific 
 strength. 
 
 "How did he manage to escape?" asked 
 the Governor- General. 
 
 "By jumping over the wall." 
 
 "Over a wall ten feet high?" demanded 
 the Governor- General. 
 
 "Without touching his hands, sir. He 
 was very tall ; must have been seven feet." 
 
 "If you ever had an atom of gray mat- 
 ter, evidently this stranger has beaten it 
 
 65 
 
HE SLIM 
 
 out of you. Hurry and notify the po- 
 lice!" 
 
 Kalora's candid version of the whole 
 affair was hardly less startling than that 
 of the guards. The stranger had come 
 over the wall suddenly, much to her 
 alarm. He attempted to converse with 
 her, but she sternly ordered him from the 
 premises. He was exceedingly tall, as 
 the guards had said, and very dark, with 
 rather long hair and curling black mus- 
 tache. He addressed her in English, but 
 spoke with a marked German accent. 
 
 This description, faithfully set down by 
 Popova, was carried away to the secret 
 police of Morovenia, said to be the most 
 astute in the world. They were in- 
 structed to watch all trains and guard the 
 frontier and, as soon as they had their 
 prisoner safely put away in the lower dun- 
 geon of the municipal prison, they were to 
 66 
 
TO SUM 
 
 notify the Governor- General, who would 
 privately pass sentence. 
 
 A crime against any member of the 
 ruler's household comes under a separate 
 category and need not be tried in public 
 sessions. For entering a royal harem or 
 addressing a woman of title the sentences 
 range from the bastinado to solitary con- 
 finement for life. 
 
 No wonder Kalora waited in trembling. 
 Like every other provincial she had much 
 respect for the indigenous constabulary. 
 She did not believe it possible for the 
 pleasing stranger to break through the 
 network that would be woven about him. 
 
 Shunning her father and sister, and 
 shunned by them, she waited many sleep- 
 less hours in her own apartments for the 
 inevitable news from beyond the walls. 
 
 Next morning there came to her a 
 cheering and terrifying message. 
 67 
 
VII 
 
 THE ONLY KOLDO 
 
 Three hours after his pole-vault, Mr. 
 Alexander H. Pike, wearing a dinner- 
 jacket newly ironed by his man-slave, and 
 with a soft hat crushed jauntily down over 
 the right ear, was pacing back and forth 
 in the main corridor of the Hotel de 1'Eu- 
 rope waiting for the dread summons to 
 the table d'hote. 
 
 He had to admit to himself that his 
 nerves seemed to be about as taut as piano 
 wires. He told himself that possibly he 
 was "up against it," and yet he had stood 
 on the brink of disaster so often during 
 his college career without acquiring ver- 
 tigo, that the experience of the afternoon 
 was like a joyous renewal of youth. 
 68 
 
He had no set program but he had a 
 feeling that if he was to be questioned he 
 would lie entertainingly. 
 
 Of one thing he was certain it would 
 help his case if he made no attempt to 
 hurry across the frontier. He believed in 
 the wisdom of hunting up the authorities 
 whenever the authorities were hunting for 
 him. For instance, in the prep school, 
 after getting the cow into the chapel, he 
 discovered her there and notified the prin- 
 cipal and was the only boy who did not 
 fall under suspicion. To assume a child- 
 like innocence and to bluff magnificently, 
 these had been the twin rules that had 
 saved him so often and would save him 
 now, unless he should be confronted by 
 the princess or the two guards, in which 
 case he whistled softly. 
 
 Suddenly two men came slamming in 
 at the front door and stalked down the 
 69 
 
TO SUM 
 
 avenue of palms. They seemed to be 
 throbbing with the importance of their er- 
 rand, as they moved toward a little 
 side office, which was the official lair of 
 the manager. 
 
 One of the men was elderly and wiz- 
 ened and the other was a detective. Pike 
 knew it as soon as he glanced at the heavy 
 jowls and the broad face and heard the 
 authoritative footfall. He knew, also, 
 that he was not a bona fide detective, but 
 a municipal detective, who is paid a 
 monthly salary and walks stealthily along 
 side streets in citizen's dress, all the time 
 imagining that the people he meets take 
 him to be a merchant or a lawyer. In 
 this he is mistaken, for he resembles noth- 
 ing except a municipal detective. 
 
 If Mr. Pike had known that the officer 
 who accompanied Popova was the cele- 
 brated Koldo, chief of the secret service, 
 70 
 
no doubt the impulse to retreat to his 
 apartment and get behind the bed cano- 
 pies would have been stronger. He 
 knew, however, that no detective of an- 
 alytical methods would expect to find the 
 criminal standing at his elbow, so he fol- 
 lowed the two over to the office and calmly 
 wedged himself into the conference. 
 
 The great Koldo was agitated as he 
 told his story to the manager, who was a 
 polite and sympathetic importation from 
 Switzerland. Popova stood by and cor- 
 roborated by nodding. 
 
 "An outrage of the most dreadful na- 
 ture has been reported from the palace," 
 said Koldo. 
 
 "Dear me!" murmured the manager. 
 "I am so sorry." 
 
 "A stranger scaled the wall and en- 
 tered the forbidden precincts. He ad- 
 dressed himself to the Princess Kalora 
 71 
 
THE SUM 
 
 with most insulting familiarity. Two of 
 the household guards captured him, but 
 he escaped after beating them brutally. 
 The report of the whole affair and a de- 
 scription of the man have been brought to 
 me by the esteemed Popova this gentle- 
 man here, who is court interpreter and 
 instructor in languages to the royal f am- 
 
 Uy." 
 
 Popova nodded and Mr. Pike saw the 
 scattered spires of Bessemer, Pennsyl- 
 vania, whirling away into a cloud of dis- 
 appearance. 
 
 "If you have a description of the man, 
 no doubt you will be able to find him," 
 he said, knowing that this kind of speech 
 would strengthen his plea of innocence 
 when brought out at the trial. 
 
 The chief of the secret service turned 
 and looked wondermgly at the bland 
 stranger and resumed: "After some re- 
 72 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 flection I have decided to make inquiries 
 at all the hotels, to learn if any foreigner 
 answering this description has lately ar- 
 rived in the city." 
 
 "You may be sure that any informa- 
 tion I possess will be put at your disposal 
 immediately," said the manager, with a 
 smile and a professional bow. 
 
 The only Koldo, breathing deeply, 
 brought from his pocket a sheet of paper, 
 while Mr. Pike propped himself deliber- 
 ately against the door and tried to mold 
 his features into that expression of guile- 
 less innocence which he had observed on 
 the face of a cherub in the Vatican. 
 
 "He is very rugged and powerful," 
 said the detective, referring to his notes. 
 "Large, quite large black hair, dark 
 eyes with a glance that seems to pierce 
 through anything long mustache, also 
 black wears much jewelry speaks with 
 73 
 
TO SI 
 
 a marked German accent wears a suit of 
 Scotch plaid heavy military boots." 
 
 Mr. Pike removed his hat and allowed 
 the electric light to twinkle on his ruddy 
 hair. 
 
 "How ah where did you get this de- 
 scription?" he asked gently. 
 
 "From the Princess herself," replied 
 Popova. "She saw him at close range." 
 
 "Believe me, I am sorry, but no one an- 
 swering the description has been at my 
 hotel," said the manager. 
 
 "Then I shall go to the Hotel Bristol 
 and the Hotel Victoria," announced 
 Koldo, with something of fierce deter- 
 mination in his tone. 
 
 "An excellent plan," assented the man- 
 ager. 
 
 "Would you mind if I butted in with a 
 suggestion?" said Mr. Pike, laying a 
 friendly hand on the arm of the redoubt- 
 74 
 
mr*T fir 
 SUM 
 
 able Koldo. "Don't you think it would 
 be better if you went alone to these hotels? 
 This distinguished gentleman," indicat- 
 ing Popova, "is well known on account of 
 being a high guy up at the palace. Sure 
 as you live, if he trails around with you, 
 you will be spotted. You don't want to 
 hunt this fellow with a brass band. Be- 
 sides, you don't need any help, do you?" 
 to the head of the secret service. 
 
 "Certainly not," replied the famous de- 
 tective, swelling visibly. " I have all the 
 data already I am planning my cam- 
 paign." 
 
 "Then I should like to have a talk with 
 Pop-what's-his-name. I think I can slip 
 him a few valuable pointers. You go 
 right along and nail your man and we'll 
 sit here in the shade of the sheltering palm 
 and tell each other our troubles." 
 
 "I must return to the palace quite 
 75 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 soon," murmured Popova, gazing at the 
 stranger uneasily. 
 
 "Call a carriage for the professor," 
 spoke up Mr. Pike briskly, to the mana- 
 ger. "I know his time is valuable, so 
 we'll get down to business immediately, 
 if not sooner." 
 
 The manager knew a millionaire's 
 voice when he heard it, so he hurried away. 
 The impatient Koldo said that he would 
 communicate directly with the palace as 
 soon as he had effected the capture, and 
 started for the front door. Then, re- 
 membering himself, he went out the back 
 way. 
 
 The old tutor, finding himself alone 
 with Mr. Pike, was not permitted to re- 
 lapse into embarrassment. 
 
 "In the first place, I want you to know 
 who and what I am," said Mr. Pike. 
 "Come into my suite and I'll show you 
 76 
 
IE Ml 
 
 something. Then you'll see that you re 
 not wasting your time on a light-weight." 
 
 He led the way to a large parlor or- 
 nately done in red, and pulled out from a 
 leather trunk a passport issued by the De- 
 partment of State of the United States 
 of America. It was a huge parchment, 
 with pictorial embellishments, heavy 
 Gothic type and a seal about the size of a 
 pie. Mr. Pike's physical peculiarities 
 were enumerated and there was a direct 
 request that the bearer be shown every 
 courtesy and attention due a citizen of 
 the great republic. Popova looked it 
 over and was impressed. 
 
 "It isn't everybody that gets those," 
 said Mr. Pike, as he put the document 
 carefully back into the trunk and covered 
 it with shirts. "Have a red chair. Take 
 off your hat ah, I remember, you leave 
 that on, don't you?" 
 77 
 
noil 
 
 The old gentleman seated himself, 
 somewhat reassured by the cheery manner 
 of his host, who sat in front of him and 
 beamed. 
 
 Mr. Pike, supposed to be given to va- 
 pory and aimless conversation, really was 
 a general. Already we have learned that 
 he based his every-day conduct on a 
 groundwork of safe principles. He had 
 certain private theories, which had stood 
 the test, and when following these theo- 
 ries he proceeded with bustling confidence. 
 One of his theories was that every man in 
 the world has a grievance and regards 
 himself as much-abused, and in order to 
 win the regard and confidence of that 
 man, all one has to do is feel around for 
 the grievance and then play upon it. 
 Mr. Pike, in his province of employer, 
 had been compelled to study the methods 
 of successful labor-union agitators. 
 78 
 
"You don't know much about me, but 
 I know plenty about you," he began, clos- 
 ing one eye and nodding wisely. "I 
 hadn't been here very long before I found 
 out who was the real brains of that out- 
 fit up at the palace." 
 
 "Really, you know, we are not supposed 
 to discuss the merits of our ruler," said 
 Popova, fairly startled at the candid tone 
 of the other. He lifted one hand in timid 
 deprecation. 
 
 "Of course you're not. That's why 
 some one who is simply a figurehead goes 
 on taking all the credit for tricks turned 
 by a smart fellow who is working for him. 
 Now, if you lived in the dear old land 
 of ready money, where the accident of 
 birth doesn't give any man the right to 
 sit on somebody else's neck, you'd be a 
 big gun. You'd have money tod a pull 
 and probably, before you got through, 
 79 
 
IK SUM 
 
 you'd be investigated. Over here, you 
 are deliberately kept in the background. 
 You are the Patsy." 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 "The squidge that means the fellow 
 who does all the worrying and gets noth- 
 ing out of it. Now, before you return to 
 what you call the palace, and which looks 
 to me like the main building of the Alle- 
 gheny Brick Works, will you do me the 
 honor of going into that cave of gloom, 
 known as the American bar, and hitting 
 up just one small libation?" 
 
 "I am not sure that I catch your mean- 
 ing," said Popova, who felt himself 
 somewhat smothered by rhetoric. 
 
 "Into the bar down at the little iron 
 table business of hoisting beverage." 
 
 "We of the faith are not supposed to 
 partake of any drink containing even a 
 small percentage of alcohol." 
 
 80 
 
TIE Mi 
 
 "I'm not supposed to dally with it my- 
 self, having been brought up on cistern 
 water, but I find in traveling that I en- 
 tertain a more kindly feeling for you 
 strange foreign people when I carry a 
 medium-sized headlight. Come along, 
 now. Don't compel me to tear your 
 clothes." 
 
 There was no resisting the masterful 
 spirit of the young steel magnate, and 
 Popova was led away to a remote apart- 
 ment, where a single shelf, sparsely set 
 with bottles, made a weak effort to repro- 
 duce the fabled splendors of far-away 
 New York. 
 
 "Let's see, what shall we tackle?" asked 
 Mr. Pike, as he checked down the line 
 with a rigid forefinger. "If you don't 
 care what happens to you, we might try a 
 couple of cocktails that is, if you like 
 the taste of eau de quinine. Oh, I'll tell 
 
 81 
 
you what! Here are lemons, seltzer and 
 gin. Boy, two gin fizzes." 
 
 The attendant, who was very juvenile 
 and much afraid of his job, smiled and 
 shook his head. 
 
 "Do you mean to say that you never 
 heard of a gin fizz?" asked Mr. Pike. 
 "All the ingredients within reach, simply 
 waiting to be introduced to each other, 
 and you have been holding them apart. 
 You ought to be ashamed of yourself. 
 Bring out some ice. Produce your jig- 
 ger. Get busy. Hand me the tools and 
 I'll do this myself." 
 
 Then, while the other two looked on in 
 abashed admiration, Mr. Pike deftly 
 squeezed the lemons and splashed in allo- 
 pathic portions of the crystal fluid and 
 used ice most wastefully. After vigor- 
 ous shaking and patient straining he shot 
 a seething stream of seltzer into each 
 
 82 
 
TESLI 
 
 glass and finally delivered to Popova a 
 translucent drink that was very tall and 
 capped with foam. 
 
 "Hide that, Professor," he said. "In 
 a few minutes you will speak several new 
 languages." 
 
 Popova sipped conservatively. 
 
 "Don't be afraid," urged Mr. Pike, 
 encouragingly. "If the boy watched me 
 carefully, possibly he can duplicate the 
 order." 
 
 The youth was more than willing, for 
 he seldom received instruction. With 
 now and then a word of counsel or warn- 
 ing from the wise man of the west in the 
 corner, he cautiously assembled two other 
 fizzes, while Mr. Pike, in a most noncha- 
 lant and roundabout manner, sought 
 information concerning affairs of state, 
 local politics, the Governor- General's 
 household and Princess Kalora. Popova 
 
 83 
 
roam 
 
 told more than he had meant to tell and 
 more than he knew that he was telling. 
 
 It may have been that the fizzes were 
 insidious or that Mr. Pike was unduly 
 persuasive, or that a combination of these 
 two powerful influences moved the el- 
 derly tutor to impulses of unusual gener- 
 osity. At any rate, he found himself 
 possessed of an affection for the young 
 man from Bessemer, Pennsylvania. It 
 was an affection both fatherly and broth- 
 erly. When Mr. Pike asked him to per- 
 form just a small service for him, he 
 promised and then promised again and 
 was still promising when his host went 
 with him to the carriage and said that he 
 had not lived in vain and that in years to 
 come he would gather his grandchildren 
 around him and tell of the circumstances 
 of his meeting with the greatest scholar 
 in southeastern Europe. 
 
 84 
 
VIII 
 
 BY MESSENGER 
 
 On the morning after the strange hap- 
 penings in the garden, Kalora sat by one 
 of the cross-barred windows overlooking 
 a side street, and envied the humble citi- 
 zens and unimportant woman drifting 
 happily across her field of vision. 
 
 Never in all her life had she walked out 
 alone. The sweet privilege of courting 
 adventure had been denied her. And yet 
 she felt, on this morning, an almost inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the outside world, 
 for had she not talked with a valorous 
 young man who could leap over high walls 
 and subdue giants and pay compliments? 
 He had thrown a sudden glare of ro- 
 mance across her lonesome pathway. The 
 
 85 
 
few minutes with him seemed to encom- 
 pass everything in life that was worth 
 remembering. She told herself that al- 
 ready she liked him better than any other 
 young man she had met, which was not 
 surprising, for he had been the first to sit 
 beside Ler and look into her eyes and tell 
 her that she was beautiful. She knew 
 that whatever of wretchedness the years 
 might hold in store for her, no local edict 
 could rob her of one precious memory. 
 She had locked it up and put it away, be- 
 yond the reach of courts and relatives. 
 
 During many wakeful hours she had re- 
 called each minute detail of that amazing 
 interview in the garden, and had tried to 
 estimate and foreshadow the young man's 
 plan of escape from the secret police. 
 
 Perhaps he had been taken during the 
 night. The greatest good fortune that 
 she could picture for him was a quick 
 86 
 
flight across the frontier, which meant 
 that he would never return that she had 
 seen him once and could not hope to see 
 him again. 
 
 In her contemplation of the luminous 
 figure of the Only Young Man, she had 
 ceased to speculate concerning her own 
 misfortunes. The fact of her disgrace 
 remained in the background, eclipsed not 
 in evidence except as a dim shadow over 
 the day. 
 
 While she sat immovable, gazing into 
 the street, feeling within herself a tumult 
 which was not of pain, nor yet of pleas- 
 ure, but a satisfactory commingling of 
 both, she heard her name spoken. Pop- 
 ova was standing in the doorway. He 
 greeted her with a smile and bow, both of 
 which struck her as being singularly af- 
 fected, for he was not given to polite ob- 
 servances. As he squatted near her, she 
 87 
 
noticed that he was tremulous and seemed 
 almost frightened about something. 
 
 "I have come to tell you that I regret 
 exceedingly the the distressing incident 
 of yesterday, and that I sympathize with 
 you deeply deeply," he began. 
 
 "It is your fault," she said, turning 
 from him and again gazing into the 
 street. "You taught me everything I do 
 not need in Morovenia. You neglected 
 the one essential. I am not blind. It 
 was never your desire that I should be like 
 my sister." 
 
 She spoke in a low monotone and with 
 no tinge of resentment, but her words had 
 an immediate and perturbing effect on 
 Popova, who stared at her wide-eyed and 
 seemed unable to find his voice. 
 
 "You must know that I have been gov- 
 erned by your father's wishes," he said 
 awkwardly. "Why do you " 
 
 88 
 
"Do not misunderstand me. I thank 
 you for what you have done. I would 
 not be other than what I am. Tell me 
 the stranger you know, the one in the 
 garden has he been taken?" inquired the 
 Princess. 
 
 "Taken! Taken! Not even a clue 
 not a trace! Either the earth opened to 
 swallow him or else Koldo is a dunce. 
 The description was most accurate. By 
 the way, I I had a most interesting con- 
 versation regarding the case, with a 
 young man at the Hotel de I'Europe last 
 evening. He is a person of great impor- 
 tance in his own country, also a student 
 of world-politics I he never have I 
 encountered such discrimination in one so 
 young. It was because of my admiration 
 for his talents and my confidence in his 
 integrity that I consented to deliver a 
 message for him." 
 
 89 
 
mam 
 
 Kalora squirmed in her pillows, and 
 turned eagerly to face Popova. 
 
 "A message? For me?" she cried, 
 eagerly. 
 
 "I will admit that the whole proceeding 
 is most irregular, to put it mildly. The 
 young man was so deeply interested in 
 your perilous adventure of yesterday, and 
 so desirous of felicitating you upon your 
 escape, that I yielded to his importunities 
 and promised to deliver to you this let- 
 ter." 
 
 He brought it out cautiously, as if it 
 were loaded with an explosive, and Ka- 
 lora pounced upon it. 
 
 "I rely upon you to maintain absolute 
 secrecy in regard to my part in this unus- 
 ual" 
 
 But Kalora, unheeding him, had torn 
 open the letter and was reading, as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 90 
 
MY DEAR PRINCESS : 
 
 I hope that's the way to begin. Something 
 tells me that you would not stand for " Your 
 Majesty " or any of these " Royal Highness " 
 trimmings. 
 
 Believe me, you are the best ever. I have just 
 had a talk with the eminent plain-clothes man 
 who is looking for the burglar that broke into 
 the garden this afternoon and tried to steal you. 
 He read to me the description. Say, if I tried 
 to write at this minute all of my present emo- 
 tions concerning you, I would burn holes in 
 the paper. When it comes to turning out fic- 
 tion, Marie Corelli is not in the running. Hon- 
 estly, when Mr. Detective walked into the hotel 
 this evening, I figured it a toss-up whether I 
 should ever see home and mother again. 
 
 I am only an humble steel-maker, but I am 
 for you and I want to see you again and tell you 
 right to your face what I think of you. If you 
 will sort of happen to be in the garden at 4 
 p. m. to-morrow (Thursday), I will come over 
 the wall at the very spot I picked out to-day. 
 I know that this method of becoming acquainted 
 with young women is not indorsed by the Ladies 9 
 
 91 
 
TESL1 
 
 Home Journal or Beatrice Fairfax, but, as near- 
 ly as I can find out, there is no other way in 
 which I can get into society over here. 
 
 So far as the bloodhounds of the law are con- 
 cerned, don't give them a thought. I have met 
 the great Koldo, and he won't know until about 
 next Sunday that yesterday was Tuesday. The 
 professor has promised to bring a reply to the 
 hotel. He is not on. 
 
 Sincerely, 
 YOUR GERMAN FRIEND. 
 
 She read it all and found herself gasp- 
 ing surprised, frightened, and moved to 
 a fluttering delight. She had thought of 
 him as skulking in byways, of concealing 
 his name and attempting to disguise him- 
 self so that he might dodge through the 
 meshes woven by the invincible Koldo, 
 and here he was, still flaunting himself at 
 the hotel and calmly preparing to repeat 
 his hazardous experiment. 
 
TE.S11 
 
 "He is a fool! " she exclaimed, forget- 
 ting that Popova was present. 
 
 "I trust the message has not offended 
 you," said the tutor, decidedly alarmed 
 at her agitation and not understanding 
 what it meant. 
 
 "I tell you he is a fool a fool!" she 
 repeated. And while Popova wondered, 
 she sprang to her feet and ran to him and 
 gave him a muscular embrace around the 
 tender portion of his neck, for he still 
 squatted after the oriental manner, even 
 though he wore a long black coat of Ger- 
 man make. 
 
 "I consented to bring it because he was 
 most urgent, and seemed a proper sort of 
 person," began Popova, "and not know- 
 ing the contents 
 
 "Bless you, I am not offended," inter- 
 rupted Kalora, and then, looking at the 
 
 93 
 
letter again, she burst into happy laugh- 
 ter. 
 
 The young stranger was unquestion- 
 ably a fool. She had not dreamed that 
 any one could be so reckless and heed- 
 less, so contemptuous of the dread ma- 
 chinery of the law, so willing to risk his 
 very life for the sake of of seeing her 
 again ! 
 
 "If he has been impertinent, possibly 
 you will take no notice of his communica- 
 tion," suggested Popova. 
 
 "Oh, I must I must at least acknow- 
 ledge the receipt of it. Common courtesy 
 demands that. I shall write just a few 
 lines and you must take them to him at 
 once. He seems to be a very forward 
 person unacquainted with our local cus- 
 toms, and so I shall formally thank him 
 and suggest to him that any further 
 correspondence would be inadvisable. 
 94 
 
TOSH 
 
 That's the really proper thing to do, don't 
 you think?" 
 
 "Possibly." 
 
 "Then wait here until I have written it, 
 and unless you wish me to go to my father 
 and tell him something that would put an 
 end to your illustrious career, deliver this 
 message within a hour deliver it your- 
 self. Give it to him and to no one else.'* 
 
 Never was a go-between more non- 
 plussed, but he promised with a readiness 
 and a sincerity which indicated that he 
 was keenly aware of the fact that Kalora 
 held him in her power. The minx had 
 read his secret without an effort! 
 
 Mr. Pike was waiting in the avenue of 
 potted palms when the greatest scholar 
 of southeastern Europe, now reduced to 
 the humble role of messenger boy, came 
 to him, somewhat flurried and breathless, 
 95 
 
and slipped a small envelope into his 
 hand. 
 
 Popova rather curtly refused to renew 
 his acquaintance with occidental fizzes, and 
 waited only until he had announced to Mr. 
 Pike that the Princess wished to empha- 
 size the advice contained in the letter and 
 to assure the presumptuous stranger that 
 it was meant for his welfare. 
 
 This is what Mr. Pike read: 
 
 My very good friend: 
 
 I have protected you, not because you deserve 
 protection, but because I like you very much. 
 You must not come to the palace grounds again. 
 They are now under double guard and, if I at- 
 tempted to meet you, no doubt a whole company 
 of our big soldiers would surround you and 
 surely you could not overcome so many power* 
 ful men. I am thinking only of your safety. 
 I beg you to leave Morovenia at once. Your 
 danger is greater than you can imagine. What 
 more can I say, except that I shall always re- 
 member you? Sincerely, 
 96 'K. 
 
TOSLI 
 
 Mr. Pike read it carefully three times 
 And then told himself aloud that it was 
 not what he would precisely term a love- 
 letter. 
 
 "I may have made an impression, but 
 certainly not a ten-strike," he thought to 
 himself, as he folded up the missive and 
 put it into the most sacred compartment 
 of his Russia-leather pocketbook, along 
 with the letter of credit. 
 
 "I fear me that the incident is closed,'* 
 he said. "I would stay here one year if 
 I thought there was a chance of seeing 
 her again, but if she wants me to fly I 
 guess I had better fly." 
 
 That evening, after an earnest contro- 
 versy with the manager over a very com- 
 plicated bill, studded with "extras," Mr. 
 Alexander H. Pike, accompanied by 
 dragoman, leather trunks, hat-boxes and 
 hold-alls, drove away to the transconti- 
 97 
 
nental express, and slept soundly while 
 crossing the dangerous frontier. 
 
 Possibly he would not have slept so 
 soundly if he had known that at four 
 o'clock that afternoon the Princess Kalora 
 had been idling her time in the palace 
 garden, walking back and forth near the 
 high wall. 
 
 She had told him not to come, and of 
 course he would not come. No one 
 could be so audacious and foolhardy as to 
 invite destruction after being solemnly 
 warned and yet, if he did come, she 
 wanted to be there to speak to him again 
 and rebuke him and tell him not to come 
 a third time. 
 
 She went back to her apartment much 
 relieved and intensely disappointed. 
 
 Such is the perverseness of the femi- 
 nine nature, even in Morovenia. 
 
 98 
 
IX 
 
 AS TO WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 About the time that Mr. Pike arrived 
 in Vienna, and after Kalora had been in 
 voluntary retirement for some forty- 
 eight hours, the famous Koldo, head of 
 the secret police, came into possession of 
 a most important clue. 
 
 Having searched for two days, without 
 finding the trail of the criminal with the 
 black mustache and the German accent, 
 he bethought himself of the wisdom of 
 going to the garden where the intruder 
 had engaged in a desperate struggle with 
 the two guards. Possibly he would dis- 
 cover incriminating footprints. Instead, 
 he found some scraps of paper, with print- 
 ing of a foreign character. 
 99 
 
By questioning the guards he learned 
 that these tatters had come from a printed 
 book which the mysterious stranger had 
 carried, and which he never relinquished 
 even while reducing his foes to insensi- 
 bility. 
 
 Koldo put these pieces of paper into a 
 strong envelope, which he sealed and 
 marked "Exhibit A," and delivered his 
 precious find to the Governor- General. 
 
 While Mr. Pike sat in Ronacher's at 
 Vienna, watching a most entertaining 
 vaudeville performance, Count Selim 
 Malagaski was in his library, conferring 
 with the wise Popova. 
 
 "How did he escape?" asked Count 
 Malagaski again and again, shaking his 
 head. "The police have searched every 
 corner of the town, and can find no one 
 answering the description. 7 * 
 
 "Have you questioned Kalora again?" 
 100 
 
THLSLIM 
 
 "Yes, and she now U'eihemberS'that he 
 had a very heavy scar t>ver' Mfci i*i gUt ^ r e. 
 Her description and these few scraps of 
 paper torn from the book he was carry- 
 ing are all that we have to guide us in 
 our search." 
 
 The Governor-General held up the 
 several remnants of a ten-cent magazine. 
 
 "It is in English; I read it badly." 
 
 He gave the torn pages to the old tu- 
 tor, and Popova, picking up the first, read 
 as follows: 
 
 What is the great danger that threatens the 
 American woman? It is obesity. It is well 
 known that ninety-nine per cent, of all the wom- 
 en in the United States are striving to reduce 
 their weight. For all such we have a message 
 of hope. Write to Madam Clarissa and 
 she 
 
 "The remainder is torn away," said 
 Popova. 
 
 101 
 
TESL1 
 
 The Governor- General had been lean- 
 ing f crw^rfl, listening intently. "Do you 
 mean to say that there is a country in 
 which all the woman are fat?" he asked. 
 
 "It would seem so," replied Popova. 
 "Let us read further." He picked up an- 
 other of the torn pages and read aloud : 
 
 To the Catena Company of Pine Creek, Michi- 
 gan: 
 
 When I began using your wonderful health- 
 food I was a mere skeleton. I have been living 
 on it for three months and I have gained a 
 pound a day. Permit me to express the con- 
 viction that you are real benefactors to the hu- 
 man race. Gratefully yours, 
 
 OSCAR TILBURY, 
 Oakdale, Arkansas. 
 
 "Stop!" exclaimed the Governor- Gen- 
 eral, striking the table. "Is it possible 
 that somewhere in this world there is a 
 food which will add a pound a day?" 
 
 "The testimonial seems genuine," re- 
 
 102 
 
plied Popova. "It has been sworn to be- 
 fore a notary." 
 
 "What country is this?" 
 "America, the land of milk and honey." 
 "Both very fattening," commented the 
 Governor-General. "Popova, I have an 
 inspiration. You well know that my sit- 
 uation here is most desperate. I must 
 find husbands for these two daughters, 
 but I dare not hope that any one will 
 come for Kalora until the disgraceful 
 affair has been forgotten and I can ab- 
 solutely demonstrate that she has devel- 
 oped into some degree of attractiveness. 
 It is better for all concerned that she 
 should leave Morovenia until the present 
 scandal blows over. Now, why not 
 America? It is a remote, half -savage 
 country, and she will be far from the 
 temptations which would beset her at any 
 fashionable capital in Europe. We read 
 
 103 
 
TKSL1M 
 
 in this magazine that all the women in 
 America are fat. She will come back to 
 us in a little while as plump as a par- 
 tridge. From the sworn testimonial it 
 would appear that she can obtain in 
 America a marvelous food which will 
 cause her to gain a pound a day. She 
 now weighs one hundred and eighteen 
 pounds. If she remained there a year 
 she would weigh, let me see one hundred 
 and eighteen plus three hundred and 
 sixty-five oh, that doesn't seem possible! 
 That is too good to be true! But even 
 six months, or only three months, would 
 be sufficient. She must be sent away for 
 a while, in the care of some one who will 
 guard her carefully. Read up on Amer- 
 ica to-night, and let me know all about it 
 in the morning." 
 
 Next day Popova, having consulted all 
 the British authorities at hand, reported 
 
 104 
 
that the United States of America cov- 
 ered a large but undeveloped area, that 
 the population was so engrossed with the 
 accumulation of wealth that it gave little 
 heed to pleasures or intellectual relaxa- 
 tion, and that the country as a whole was 
 unworthy of consideration except as the 
 abode of a swollen material prosperity. 
 
 "Just the place for her," exclaimed the 
 Governor-General. "No pleasures to dis- 
 tract her, an atmosphere of plodding 
 commercialism, an abundance of health- 
 giving nourishment! Perhaps the mere 
 change of climate will have the desired 
 effect. We will make the experiment. 
 She is doomed if she remains here, and 
 America seems to be our only hope. I 
 suppose our beloved Monarch sends a 
 minister to that country. If so, commu- 
 nicate with the Secretary of the Legation 
 and request him to secure secluded apart- 
 
 105 
 
ments for her and a suite. You shall ac- 
 company her." 
 
 "I?" exclaimed Popova, unable to con- 
 ceal his joy. 
 
 "Yes; she must be under careful re- 
 straint all the time. What is the capital 
 of the United States?" 
 
 "Washington. It is a sleepy and well- 
 behaved town. I have looked it up." 
 
 "Good! You shall take her to Wash- 
 ington. If one of the many civil wars 
 should break out, or there should be an 
 uprising of the red men, she can hurry to 
 the protection of the Turkish Embassy. 
 Let us make immediate preparations 
 and remember, Popova, that my w r hole 
 future happiness as a father depends up- 
 on the success of this expedition." 
 
 When Kalora was gravely informed by 
 her father that she and the tutor and a 
 half-dozen female attendants were to be 
 106 
 
bundled up and sent away to America, 
 and that she was to do penance, take a 
 dieting treatment, and come back in due 
 time to try and atone for her unfortunate 
 past, did she weep and beg to be allowed 
 to remain at her own dear home? No; she 
 listened in apparently meek and rather 
 mournful submission, and, after her 
 father went away, she turned handsprings 
 across the room. 
 
 Her utmost dream of happiness had 
 been realized. She was to go to the land 
 of the red-headed stranger where she 
 would be admired and courted, and where, 
 in time, she might aspire to the ultimate 
 honor of having her picture in a ten-cent 
 magazine. 
 
 107 
 
ON THE WING 
 
 The train rolled away from the low and 
 dingy station and was in the open country 
 of Morovenia. Kalora and her elderly 
 guardian and the young women who were 
 to be her companions during the period 
 of exile had been tucked away into ad- 
 joining compartments. Each young wo- 
 man was muffled and veiled according to 
 the most discreet and orthodox rules. 
 
 Popova's bright red fez contrasted 
 strangely with his silvering hair, but no 
 more strangely than did this wondrous ex- 
 perience of starting for a new world con- 
 trast with the quiet years that he had spent 
 among his books. 
 
 The train sped into the farm-lands. 
 
 108 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 On either side was a wide stretch of har- 
 vest fields, heaving into gentle billows, 
 with here and there a shabby cluster of 
 buildings. If Kalora had only known, 
 Morovenia was very much like the far- 
 away America, except that Morovenia 
 had not learned to decorate the hillsides 
 with billboards. 
 
 At last she was to have a taste of free- 
 dom! No father to scold and plead; no 
 much-superior sister to torment her with 
 reproaches; no peering through grated 
 windows at one little rectangle of outside 
 sunshine. To be sure, Popova had re- 
 ceived explicit and positive instructions 
 concerning her government. But Pop- 
 ova pshaw! 
 
 She unwound her veil and removed her 
 head-gear and sat bareheaded by the car- 
 window, greedily welcoming each new pic- 
 ture that swung into view. 
 109 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 "You must keep your face covered 
 while we are in public or semi-public 
 places," said Popova gently, repeating his 
 instructions to the very letter. 
 
 "I shall not." 
 
 Thus ended any exercise of Popova's 
 authority during the whole journey. 
 
 Before the train had come to Budapest 
 all the young women, urged on to insub- 
 ordination, had removed their veils, and 
 Kalora had boldly invaded another com- 
 partment to engage in rapt and feverish 
 dialogue with a little but vivacious 
 Frenchwoman. 
 
 Two hours out from Vienna, the tutor 
 found her involved in a business confer- 
 ence with a guard of the train. She had 
 learned that the tickets permitted a stop- 
 over in Vienna. She wished to see Vi- 
 enna. She had decided to spend one 
 whole day in Vienna, 
 no 
 
TESLI 
 
 Popova, as usual, made a feeble show 
 of maintaining his authority, but he was 
 overruled. 
 
 Count Selim Malagaski, at home, con- 
 sulting the prearranged schedule, said, 
 "This morning they have arrived in Paris 
 and Popova is arranging for the steam- 
 ship tickets.'' 
 
 At which very moment, Kalora was in 
 an open carriage driving from one Vienna 
 shop to another, trying to find ready-made 
 garme.nts similar to those worn by Mrs. 
 Rawley Plumston. Popova was now a 
 bundle-carrier. 
 
 The shopping in Vienna was merely a 
 prelude to a riotous extravagance of time 
 and money in Paris. Popova, writing 
 under dictation, sent a message to Moro- 
 venia to the effect that they had been 
 compelled to wait a week in order to get 
 comfortable rooms on a steamer, 
 ill 
 
TESLi 
 
 Kalora had the dressmakers working 
 night and day. 
 
 She and her mother and her grand- 
 mother and her great-grandmother and 
 the whole line of maternal ancestors 
 had been under suppression and had 
 attired themselves according to the di- 
 rections of a religious Prophet, who had 
 been ignorant concerning color effects. 
 And yet, now that Kalora had escaped 
 from the cage, the original instinct as- 
 serted itself. The love of finery can not 
 be eliminated from any feminine species. 
 
 When she boarded the steamer she was 
 outwardly a creature of the New World. 
 
 From the moment of embarking she 
 seemed exhilarated by the salt air and the 
 spirit of democracy. 
 
 She lingered in New York more shop- 
 ping. 
 
 By the time she arrived at Washington 
 
 112 
 
and went breezing in to call upon a certain 
 dignified young Secretary, the transfor- 
 mation was complete. She might not 
 have been put together strictly according 
 to mode, but she was learning rapidly, and 
 willing to learn more rapidly. 
 
 113 
 
XI 
 
 AN OUTING A REUNION 
 
 The Secretary of the Legation at 
 Washington was surprised to receive a let- 
 ter from the Governor- General of Moro- 
 venia requesting him to find apartments 
 for the Princess Kalora and a small 
 retinue. The letter explained that the 
 Governor- General's daughter had been 
 given a long sea-voyage and assigned to a 
 period of residence within the quiet 
 boundaries of Washington, in the hope 
 that her health might be improved 
 
 The Secretary looked up the list of ho- 
 tels and boarding-houses. He did not 
 deem it advisable to send a convalescent 
 to one of the large and busy hotels; 
 neither did he think it proper to reserve 
 
rooms for her at an ordinary boarding- 
 house, where she would sit at the same 
 table with department-employees and con- 
 gressmen. So he compromised on a very 
 exclusive hotel patronized by legislators 
 who had money of their own, by many of 
 the titled attaches of the embassies, and by 
 families that came during the season with 
 the hope of edging their way into official 
 society. He explained to the manager of 
 the hotel that the Princess Kalora was an 
 invalid, would require secluded apart- 
 ments, and probably would not care to 
 meet any of the other persons living at 
 the hotel. 
 
 Within a week after the rooms had 
 been reserved the invalid drove up to the 
 Legation to thank the Secretary for his 
 kindness. Now, the Secretary had lived 
 in modern capitals for many years, was 
 trained in diplomacy, and had schooled 
 
 115 
 
IttSLi 
 
 himself never to appear surprised. But 
 the Princess Kalora fairly bowled him 
 over. He had pictured her as a wan and 
 waxen creature, who would be carried to 
 the hotel in a closed carriage or ambu- 
 lance, there to recline by the windowside 
 and look out at the rustling leaves. He 
 had decided, after hours of deliberation, 
 that the etiquette of the situation would 
 be for some member of the Legation to 
 call upon her about once a week and take 
 flowers to her. 
 
 And here was the invalid, bounding out 
 of a coupe, tripping up the front steps 
 and bursting in upon him like an untamed 
 Amazon from the prairies of Nebraska. 
 She wore a tailor-made suit of dark ma- 
 terial, a sailor hat, tan gloves with big 
 welts on the back and stout, low-heeled 
 Oxfords. This was the young woman 
 
 116 
 
IE si 
 
 who had come five thousand miles to im- 
 prove her health! This was the child of 
 the Orient, and in the Orient, woman is a 
 hothouse flower. This was the timid 
 young recluse to whom the soft-spoken 
 diplomats were to carry a few roses about 
 once a week. 
 
 Why had she called upon the Secre- 
 tary? First, to thank him for having en- 
 gaged the rooms; second, to invite him 
 to take her out to a country club and teach 
 her the game of golf. She had heard 
 people at the hotel talking about golf. 
 The game had been strongly commended 
 to her by a congressman's daughter, with 
 whom she had ascended to the top of the 
 Washington Monument. 
 
 When the Secretary, having recovered 
 his breath, asked if she felt strong 
 enough to attempt such a vigorous game, 
 
she was moved to silvery laughter. She 
 told what she had accomplished during 
 three short days in Washington. She 
 had attended two matinees with Popova, 
 had gone motoring into the Virginia hills, 
 had inspected all the public buildings, and 
 studied every shop-window in Pennsyl- 
 vania Avenue. The Secretary knew that 
 all this outdoor freedom was not usually 
 accorded a young woman of his native 
 domain, and yet he felt that he had no au- 
 thority to restrain her or correct her. 
 She was a princess, and he was relatively 
 a subordinate, and, when she requested 
 him to take her to the country club, he 
 gave an embarrassed consent. 
 
 "You have been in America a long 
 time?" she asked. 
 
 "About three years." 
 
 "You have met many people that is, 
 the important people?" 
 
 118 
 
THE SLIM 
 
 "All of them are important over here. 
 Those that are not very wealthy or very 
 eminent are getting ready to be." 
 
 "I am wondering if you could tell me 
 something about a young man I met 
 abroad. I met him only once, and I have 
 quite forgotten his name." 
 
 "I'm afraid I haven't met him." 
 
 "He is rather good-looking and has 
 well, red hair; not rusty red, but a sort 
 of golden red." 
 
 "There are millions of red-haired young 
 men in America." 
 
 "Please don't discourage me. Now I 
 remember the name of his home. He 
 lived in Pennsa Pennsylvania, that's it." 
 
 "Pennsylvania is about four times as 
 large as Morovenia." 
 
 "But he is very wealthy. He talked 
 as if he had come into millions." 
 
 "I can well believe it. The millionaires 
 119 
 
TESLIM 
 
 of Pennsylvania are even as the sands of 
 the sea or the leaves of the forest." 
 
 "He owns some sort of mills or factor- 
 ies where they make steel." 
 
 "Every millionaire in Pennsylvania has 
 something to do with steel. Now, if you 
 were searching in that state for a young 
 man who is penniless and has nothing 
 to do with the steel industry, possibly I 
 might be of some service to you. The 
 whole area of Pennsylvania is simply in- 
 fested with millionaires. Not all of them 
 are red-headed, but they will be, before 
 Congress gets through with them." 
 
 This playful lapse into the American 
 vernacular was quite lost upon the Prin- 
 cess Kalora, who was sitting very still and 
 gazing in a most disconsolate manner at 
 the Secretary. 
 
 "I felt sure that you could tell me all 
 about him," she said. 
 120 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 "Believe me, if I encounter any young 
 millionaire from Pennsylvania, whose hair 
 is golden-red, I shall put detectives on his 
 trail and let you know at once. You met 
 him abroad?" 
 
 "At a garden party in Morovenia." 
 
 "Indeed! Garden parties in Moro- 
 venia! And yet that is not one-half as 
 surprising as to find you here in Wash- 
 ington." 
 
 "You are not displeased to find me 
 here?" 
 
 "Charmed delighted." 
 
 "And you will take me to the country 
 club?" 
 
 "At any time. It will really give me 
 much pleasure." 
 
 "I shall drop a note. Good-by." 
 
 He stood at the window to watch her as 
 she nimbly jumped into the coupe and 
 was driven away. 
 
 121 
 
That evening he made a most astonish- 
 ing report to his intimates of the corps 
 and asked: 
 
 "What shall I do?" 
 
 "Do you feel competent to take charge 
 of her and regulate her conduct?" 
 
 "I do not." 
 
 "Have you instructions to watch her 
 and make sure that she observes the eti- 
 quette and keeps within the restrictions of 
 her own country while she is visiting in 
 Washington?" 
 
 "Nothing of the sort." 
 
 "From your first interview with her, do 
 you believe that it would be advisable for 
 any of us to attempt to interfere with her 
 plans?" 
 
 "Decidedly not." 
 
 "Then take her to the country club and 
 teach her the game of golf, and remember 
 the old saying at home, that no man was 
 122 
 
ever given praise for attempting to gov- 
 ern another man's family." 
 
 So it was settled that the Legation 
 would not attempt any supervision of Ka- 
 lora's daily program. And it was a very 
 wise decision, for the daily program was 
 complicated and the Legation would have 
 been kept exceedingly busy. 
 
 Popova became merely a sort of foot- 
 man, or modified chaperon. He knew 
 that he had no real authority and seldom 
 attempted even the most timid suggestions 
 as to her conduct. Once or twice he men- 
 tioned health- food and dieting, and was 
 pooh-poohed into a corner. As for the 
 women attendants, who had been sent 
 along that they might be the companions 
 of the Princess during the long hours of 
 loneliness and seclusion, they were trained 
 to act as hair-dressers and French maids 
 and repairing seamstresses! 
 
 123 
 
Kalora had money and a title and phys- 
 ical attractions. Could she well escape 
 the gaieties of Washington? Be assured 
 that she made no effort to escape them. 
 She followed the busy routine of dinners 
 and balls, receptions and afternoon teas, 
 her childish enthusiasm never lagging. 
 She could play at golf and she seemed to 
 know horseback riding the first time she 
 tried it, and after the first two weeks she 
 drove her own motor-car. 
 
 The letters that went back to Moro- 
 venia were fairly dripping with superla- 
 tives and happy adjectives. She was 
 delighted with Washington; she was in 
 excellent health; the members of the Le- 
 gation were very thoughtful in their at- 
 tentions ; the autumn weather was all that 
 could be desired; her apartments at the 
 hotel were charming. In fact, her whole 
 life was rose-colored, but never a word of 
 
 124 
 
real news for her anxious father and sis- 
 ter nothing about gaining a pound a 
 day. The Governor- General hoped from 
 the encouraging tone of the letters that 
 she was quietly housed, out in the borders 
 of some primeval forest, gradually en- 
 larging into the fullness of perfect 
 womanhood. 
 
 About three months after her depart- 
 ure, in order to reassure himself regarding 
 the progress in her case, he wrote a letter 
 to the minister at Washington. He told 
 the minister that his child was disposed to 
 be unruly and that Popova had become 
 careless and somewhat indefinite in his re- 
 ports and would he, the minister, please 
 write and let an anxious parent know the 
 actual weight of Princess Kalora? 
 
 The minister resented this manner of 
 request. He did not feel that it was 
 within the duties of a high official to go 
 
 125 
 
HE SLIM 
 
 out and weigh young women, so he replied 
 briefly that he knew no way of ascertaining 
 the exact weight of an acrobatic young 
 woman who never stood still long enough 
 to be weighed, but he could assure the 
 father that she was somewhat slimmer and 
 more petite than when she arrived in 
 Washington a few weeks before. 
 
 This letter slowly traveled back to 
 Morovenia, and on the very day of its de- 
 livery to Count Selim Malagaski, who 
 read it aloud and then went into a froth- 
 ing paroxysm of rage, the Princess 
 Kalora in Washington figured in a most 
 joyful episode. 
 
 A western millionaire, who had bought 
 a large cubical palace on one of the radiat- 
 ing avenues, was giving a dancing-party, 
 to which the entire blue book had been 
 invited. Kalora went, trailed by the 
 long-suffering Popova. She wore her 
 
 126 
 
IULSL1 
 
 most fetching Parisian gown, and decked 
 herself out with wrought jewelry of 
 quaint and heavy design, which was the 
 envy of all the other young women in 
 town, and she put in a very busy night, 
 for she danced with army officers, and 
 lieutenants of the navy, and one senator, 
 and goodness knows how many half- 
 grown diplomats. 
 
 At two o'clock in the morning she was 
 in the supper-room : a fairly late hour for 
 a young woman supposed to be leading a 
 quiet life. The food set before her would 
 not have been prescribed for a tender 
 young creature who was dieting. She 
 was supping riotously on stuffed olives. 
 Her companion was a young gentleman 
 from the army. They sat beneath a huge 
 palm. The tables were crowded together 
 rather closely. 
 
 She chanced to look across at the little 
 127 
 
table to her right, and she saw a young 
 man a young man with light hair almost 
 ripe enough to be auburn. 
 
 With a smothered "Oh!" she dropped 
 the olive poised between her fingers, and 
 as she did so, he looked across and saw her 
 and exclaimed: 
 
 "Well, 111 be" 
 
 He came over, almost upsetting two 
 tables in his impetuous course. She ex- 
 pected to see him jump over them. 
 
 He seized her hand and gazed at her in 
 grinning delight, and the young gentle- 
 man from the army went into total eclipse. 
 
 128 
 
XII 
 
 THE GOVERNOR CABLES 
 
 "I don't believe it. It's too good to be 
 true. I am in a trance. It isn't you, is 
 it?" 
 
 And he was still holding her hand. 
 
 "Yes it is." 
 
 "The Princess ah ?" 
 
 "Kalora." 
 
 "That's it. I was so busy thinking of 
 you after I left your cute little country 
 that I couldn't remember the name. I 
 thought of 'calico' and Tedora' and c Ko- 
 komo' and a lot of names that sounded 
 like it, but I knew I was wrong. Kalora 
 Kalora I'll remember that. I knew it 
 began with a *K.' But what in the name 
 of all that is pure and sanctified are you 
 doing in the land of the free?" 
 129 
 
"You invited me to come. Don't you 
 remember? You urged me to come." 
 
 "That's why you notified me as soon as 
 you arrived, isn't it? How long have you 
 been here?" 
 
 "I forget three months four months. 
 Surely you have seen my name in the 
 papers. Every morning you may read a 
 full description of what Princess Kalora 
 of Morovenia wore the night before. For 
 a simple and democratic people you are 
 rather fond of high-sounding titles, don't 
 you think?" 
 
 "I haven't read the papers, because I'm 
 always afraid I'll find something about 
 myself. They don't describe my cos- 
 tumes, however. They simply say that I 
 am trying to blow up and scuttle the ship 
 of State. But this has nothing to do with 
 your case. It is customary, when you ac- 
 cept an invitation, to let the host know 
 
 130 
 
mOT T1U 
 SLi 
 
 something about it. In other words, why 
 didn't you drop me a line?" 
 
 "I will confess the whole truth since 
 you have been candid enough to admit 
 that you had forgotten my name. I tried 
 to find you, through the Legation. I de- 
 scribed you, but your name please tell 
 me your name again? You mentioned it, 
 that day in the garden. Popova promised 
 to go to the hotel and get it for me, but 
 we were bundled away in such a hurry." 
 
 "Heavens! Imagine any one forget- 
 ting such a name! Alexander H. Pike, 
 Bessemer, Pennsylvania, tariff- fed infant 
 and all-round plutocrat." 
 
 "Why, of course, Pike, Pike it is the 
 name of a fish." 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 The young gentleman from the army 
 moved uneasily, and they remembered 
 that he was present. He hoped they 
 
 131 
 
wouldn't mind if he went to look up his 
 partner for the next dance, and they as- 
 sured him that they wouldn't, and he be- 
 lieved them and was backing away when 
 Popova arrived to suggest the lateness of 
 the hour and intimate his willingness to 
 return to the hotel. 
 
 His sudden journey to the western 
 hemisphere and his period of residence at 
 Washington had been punctuated with 
 surprises, but the amazement which smote 
 him when he saw Kalora leaning across 
 the table toward the young man who had 
 introduced the gin fizz into Morovenia 
 was sudden and shocking. 
 
 Mr. Pike greeted him rapturously and 
 gave him the keys to North America, and 
 then Kalora patted him on the arm and 
 sent him away to wait for her. 
 
 They sat and talked for an hour sat 
 and talked and laughed and pieced out 
 
 132 
 
between them the wonderful details of 
 that very lively day in Morovenia. 
 
 "And you have come all the way to 
 Washington, D. C., in order to increase 
 your weight?" he asked. "That cer- 
 tainly would make a full-page story for 
 a Sunday paper. Think of anybody's 
 coming to Washington to fatten up! 
 Why, when I come down here to regulate 
 these committees, I lose a pound a day." 
 
 "I never dreamed that there could be 
 a country in which women are given so 
 much freedom so many liberties." 
 
 "And what we don't give them, they 
 take which is eminently correct. Of all 
 the sexes, there is only one that ever 
 made a real impression on me." 
 
 "And to think that some day I shall 
 have to return to Morovenia!" 
 
 "Forget it," urged Mr. Pike, in a low 
 and soothing tone. "Far be it from me 
 
 133 
 
TESLI 
 
 to start anything in your family, but if 
 I were you, I would never go back there 
 to serve a life sentence in one of those 
 lime-kilns, with a curtain over my face. 
 You are now at the spot where woman 
 is real superintendent of the works, and 
 this is where you w r ant to camp for the 
 rest of your life." 
 
 "But I can not disobey my father. I 
 dare not remain if he " 
 
 She paused, realizing that the talk had 
 led her to dangerous ground, for Mr. 
 Pike had dropped his large hand on her 
 small one and v/as gazing at her with 
 large devouring eyes. 
 
 "You won't go back if I can help it," 
 he said, leaning still nearer to her. "I 
 know this is a little premature, even for 
 me, but I just want you to know that 
 from the minute I looked down from the 
 wall that day and saw you under the 
 
 134 
 
TESL1 
 
 tree well, I haven't been able to find 
 anything else in the world worth looking 
 at. When I met you again to-night, I 
 didn't remember your name. You didn't 
 remember my name. What of that? 
 We know each other pretty well don't 
 you think we do? The way you looked 
 at me, when I came across to speak to 
 you I don't know, but it made me be- 
 lieve, all at once, that maybe you had 
 been thinking of me, the same as I had 
 been thinking of you. If I'm saying 
 more than I have a right to say, head me 
 off, but, for once in my life, I'm in earn- 
 est." 
 
 "I'm glad you like me," she said, and 
 she pushed back in her chair and looked 
 down and away from him and felt that 
 her face was burning with blushes. 
 
 "When you have found out all about 
 me, I hope you'll keep on speaking to me 
 
 135 
 
just the same," he continued. "I warn 
 you that, from now on, I am going to 
 pester you a lot. You'll find me sitting 
 on your front door-step every morning, 
 ready to take orders. To-morrow I must 
 hie me to New York, to explain to some 
 venerable directors why the net earnings 
 have fallen below forty per cent. But 
 when I return, O fair maiden, look out 
 for me." 
 
 He would be back in Washington 
 within three days. He would come to 
 her hotel. They were to ride in the motor, 
 car and they were to go to the theaters. 
 She must meet his mother. His mother 
 would take her to New York, and there 
 would be the opera, and this, and that, 
 and so on, for he was going to show her 
 all the attractions of the Western Hemis- 
 phere. 
 
 The night was thinning into the gray- 
 
 136 
 
ness of dawn when he took her to the 
 waiting carriage. She put her hand 
 through the window and he held it for a 
 long time, while they once more went over 
 their delicious plans. 
 
 After the carriage had started, Popova 
 spoke up from his dark corner. 
 
 "I am beginning to understand why 
 you wished to come to America. Also 
 I have made a discovery. It was Mr. 
 Pike who overcame the guards and 
 jumped over the wall." 
 
 "I shall ask the Governor-General to 
 give you Koldo's position." 
 
 An enormous surprise was waiting for 
 them at the hotel. It was a cable from 
 Morovenia long, decisive, definite, com- 
 posed with an utter disregard for heavy 
 tolls. It directed Popova to bring the 
 shameless daughter back to Morovenia 
 immediately not a moment's delay un- 
 137 
 
der pain of the most horrible penalties 
 that could be imagined. They were to 
 take the first steamer. They were to 
 come home with all speed. Surely there 
 was no mistaking the fierce intent of the 
 message. 
 
 Popova suffered a moral collapse and 
 Kalora went into a fit of weeping. Both 
 of them feared to return and yet, at such 
 a crisis, they knew that they dared not 
 disobey. 
 
 The whole morning was given over to 
 hurried packing-up. An afternoon train 
 carried them to New York. A steamer 
 was to sail early next day, and they went 
 aboard that very night. 
 
 Kalora had left a brief message at her 
 hotel in Washington. It was addressed 
 to Mr. Alexander H. Pike, and simply 
 said that something dreadful had hap- 
 pened, that she had been called home, that 
 
 138 
 
she was going back to a prison the doors 
 of which would ne^er swing open for her, 
 and she must say good-by to him for ever. 
 
 She tried to communicate with him be- 
 fore sailing away from New York. 
 Messenger boys, bribed with generous 
 cab- fares, were sent to all the large hotels, 
 but they could not find the right Mr. 
 Pike. The real Mr. Pike was living at 
 a club. 
 
 She leaned over the railing and 
 watched the gang-plank until the very 
 moment of sailing, hoping that he might 
 appear. But he did not come, and she 
 went to her state-room and tried to for- 
 get him, and to think of something 
 other than the reception awaiting her 
 back in the dismal region known as 
 Morovenia. 
 
 1S9 
 
XIII 
 
 THE HOME-COMING 
 
 The Governor-General waited in the 
 main reception-room for the truant expe- 
 dition. He was hoping against hope. 
 Orders had been given that Popova, Ka- 
 lora and the whole disobedient crew 
 should be brought before him as soon as 
 they arrived. His wrath had not cooled, 
 but somehow his confidence in himself 
 seemed slowly to evaporate, as it came 
 time for him to administer the scolding 
 the scolding which he had rehearsed over 
 and over in his mind. 
 
 He heard the rolling wheels grit on the 
 drive outside, and then there was mur- 
 muring conversation in the hallway, and 
 then Kalora entered. His most dread- 
 no 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 ful suspicions were ten times confirmed. 
 She wore no veil and no flowing gown. 
 She was tightly incased in a gray cloth 
 suit, and there was no mistaking the pre- 
 sence of a corset underneath. On her 
 head was a kind of Alpine hat with a 
 defiant feather standing upright at one 
 side. Before her father had time to 
 study the details of this barbaric costume, 
 he sat staring at her as she was silhou- 
 etted for an instant between him and the 
 open window. 
 
 Merciful Mahomet! She was as lean 
 and supple as an Austrian race-horse! 
 
 He could say nothing. She ran over 
 and gave him a smack on the forehead 
 and then said cheerily: 
 
 "Well, popsy, here I am! What do 
 you think of me?" 
 
 While Count Selim Malagaski was 
 holding to his chair and trying to sort out 
 
 141 
 
from the limited vocabulary of Moro- 
 venia the words that could express his 
 boiling emotions, he saw Popova stand- 
 ing shamefaced in the doorway. Was it 
 really Popova? The tutor wore a trav- 
 eling-suit with large British checks, a 
 blue four-in-hand, and, instead of a fez, 
 a rakish cap with a peak in front. As 
 he edged into the room the young women 
 attendants filed timidly behind him. 
 Horror upon horrors! They were in 
 shirt-waists, with skirts that came tightly 
 about the hips, and every one of them 
 wore a chip hat, and not one of them was 
 veiled ! 
 
 The Governor-General tried to steady 
 himself in order to meet this unprece- 
 dented crisis. 
 
 "So this is how you have managed my 
 affairs?" he said in angry tones to the 
 trembling Popova. 
 
 142 
 
"What is the meaning of this shocking 
 exhibition?" 
 
 "Don't blame him, father," spoke up 
 Kalora. "I am responsible for whatever 
 has happened. We have seen something 
 of the world. We have learned that 
 Morovenia is about two hundred years 
 behind the times. They knew that you 
 would not approve, but I have compelled 
 them to have the courage of their convic- 
 tions. You can see for yourself that we 
 no longer belong here. There is but one 
 thing for you to do, and that is to send 
 us away again." 
 
 "No!" exclaimed her father, banging 
 his fist on the table, and then coming to 
 his feet. "You shall remain here all of 
 you and be punished! You have ru- 
 ined your own prospects; you have con- 
 demned your poor sister to a life of single 
 misery, and you have made your father 
 
 143 
 
THE SLIM 
 
 the laughing-stock of all Morovenia! If 
 I can not reform you and make you a 
 dutiful child, at least I can make an ex- 
 ample of you !" 
 
 "Stop!" she said very sharply. "Let 
 us not have an unfortunate scene in the 
 presence of the servants. If you have 
 anything to say to me, send them away, 
 and remember also, father, I have certain 
 rights which even you must respect. 
 Also, I have a great surprise for you. I 
 am beautiful. Hundreds of young men 
 have told me so. Under no circum- 
 stances would I permit myself to become 
 large and gross and bulky. You are dis- 
 heartened because no young man in 
 Morovenia wishes to marry me. Bless 
 you, there isn't a young man in this coun- 
 try worth marrying!" 
 
 "Young woman, you have taxed my 
 
 144 
 
TIE SUM 
 
 patience far beyond the limit," said her 
 father, speaking low in an effort to con- 
 trol his wrath. "Hereafter you shall 
 never go beyond the walls of this palace ! 
 You shall be a waiting-maid for your sis- 
 ter! The servants shall be instructed to 
 treat you as a menial one of their own 
 class! These shameless women are dis- 
 missed from my service! As for you" 
 turning upon the old tutor "y u shall 
 be put away under lock and key until I 
 can devise some punishment severe enough 
 to fit your case !" 
 
 That night Kalora slept on a hard and 
 narrow cot in a bare apartment adjoining 
 her sister's gorgeous boudoir quite a 
 change from the suite overlooking the 
 avenue. 
 
 The shirt-waist brigade had been sent 
 into banishment, and poor Popova was 
 sitting on a wooden stool in a dungeon, 
 
 145 
 
thinking of the dinners he had eaten at 
 Old Point Comfort and wondering if he 
 had not overplayed himself in the effort 
 to be avenged upon the Governor- Gen- 
 eral. 
 
 146 
 
XIV 
 
 HEROISM REWARDED 
 
 A month later Popova was still in 
 prison, and had demonstrated that even 
 after one has lunched for several months 
 at the Shoreham, the New Willard and 
 the Raleigh, he may subsist on such sim- 
 ple fare as bread and water. 
 
 Kalora had been humiliated to the ut- 
 termost, but her spirit was unbroken and 
 defiant. 
 
 She was nominally a servant, but Je- 
 neka and the others dared not attempt 
 any overbearing attitude toward her, for 
 they feared her sharp and ready wit. 
 
 The fires of inward wrath seemed to 
 have reduced her weight a few pounds, 
 147 
 
mffT HI 
 SUM 
 
 so that if ever a man faced a situation of 
 unbroken gloom, that man was the poor 
 Cover nor- General. 
 
 Count Malagaski sat in the large, over- 
 decorated audience room, alone with his 
 sorrowful meditations. An attendant 
 brought him a note. 
 
 "The man is at the gate," said the at- 
 tendant. "He started to come in. We 
 tried to keep him out. He pushed three 
 of the soldiers out of the way, but we 
 finally held him back, so he sends this 
 note." 
 
 A few lines had been written in pencil 
 on the reverse side of a typewritten busi- 
 ness letter. The Governor- General could 
 speak English, but he read it rather badly, 
 so he sent for his secretary, who told him 
 that the note ran as follows : 
 
 You don't know me and there is no need to 
 give my name. Must see you on important mat- 
 148 
 
mOT 11 f 
 SUM 
 
 ter of business. Something in regard to your 
 daughter. 
 
 "Great Heavens, another one!" said 
 the Governor-General. "There are one 
 thousand young men ready and willing 
 to marry Jeneka and not one in all the 
 world wants Kalora. Send him away!" 
 
 "I am afraid he won't go," suggested 
 the attendant. "He is a very positive 
 character." 
 
 "Then send him in to me. I can dis- 
 pose of his case in short order." 
 
 A few moments later Count Selim 
 Malagaski found himself sitting face to 
 face with a ruddy young man in a blue 
 suit a square-shouldered, smiling young 
 gentleman, with hair of subdued auburn. 
 
 "I take it that you're a busy man and 
 
 I'll come to the point," said the young 
 
 man, pulling up his chair. "I try to be 
 
 business from the word go, even in mat- 
 
 149 
 
man 
 
 ters of this kind. You have a daughter." 
 "I have two daughters," replied the 
 Governor- General sadly. 
 
 "You have only one that interests me. 
 I have been around a good deal, but she 
 is about the finest looking girl I " 
 
 "Before you say any more, let me ex- 
 plain to you," said the Governor- General 
 very courteously. "Perhaps you are not 
 entitled to this information, but you seem 
 to be a gentleman and a person of some 
 importance, and you have done me the 
 honor to admire my daughter, and, there- 
 fore, it is well that you should know all 
 the facts in the case. I have two daugh- 
 ters. One is exceedingly beautiful and 
 her hand has been sought in marriage by 
 young men of the very first families of 
 Morovenia, notably Count Luis Mul- 
 dova, who owns a vast estate near the 
 Roumanian frontier. I have another 
 
 150 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 daughter who is decidedly unattractive, 
 so much so that she has never had an 
 offer of marriage. I am telling you all 
 this because it is known to all Moro- 
 venia, and even you, a stranger, would 
 have learned it very soon. Under the law 
 here, a younger sister may not marry until 
 the elder sister has married. My unat- 
 tractive daughter is the elder of the two. 
 Do you see the point? Do you under- 
 stand, when you come talking of a mar- 
 riage with my one desirable daughter, that 
 not only are you competing with all the 
 wealthy and titled young men of this 
 country, but also you are condemned to 
 sit down and patiently wait until the elder 
 sister has married, which means, my 
 dear sir, that probably you will wait for 
 ever? Therefore I think I may safely 
 wish you good day." 
 
 "Hold on, here," said the visitor, who 
 
 151 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 had been listening intently, with his eyes 
 half-closed, and nodding his head quickly 
 as he caught the points of the unusual sit- 
 uation. "If I can fix it up with you and 
 daughter and I don't think I'll have any 
 trouble with daughter what's the matter 
 with my rustling around and finding a 
 good man for sister? There is no reason 
 why any young woman with a title should 
 go into the discard these days. At least 
 we can make a try. I have tackled prop- 
 ositions that looked a good deal tougher 
 than this." 
 
 "Do you think it possible that you could 
 find a desirable husband for a young 
 woman who has no physical charms and 
 who, on two or three occasions, has scan- 
 dalized our entire court?" 
 
 "I don't say I can, but I'm willing to 
 take a whirl at it." 
 
 152 
 
"My dear sir, before we go any further, 
 tell me something about yourself. You 
 are an Englishman, I presume ?" 
 
 "Great Scott ! You're the first one that 
 ever called me that. I have been called 
 a good many things, but never an Eng- 
 lishman. I'll have to begin wearing a 
 flag in my hat. I'm an American." 
 
 "American!" gasped the Governor- 
 General. "I am very sorry to hear it. I 
 have every reason for regarding you and 
 your native country as my natural ene- 
 
 mies." 
 
 "You're dead wrong. America is all 
 right. The States size up pretty well 
 alongside of this little patch of country." 
 
 "I do not blame you for being loyal to 
 your own home, sir, but isn't it rather pre- 
 sumptuous for you, an American, to as- 
 pire to the hand of a Princess who could 
 
 153 
 
TKSL1M 
 
 marry any one of a dozen young men of 
 wealth and social position?" 
 
 "What's the matter with my wealth and 
 social position? I'm willing to stack up 
 my bank-account with any other candi- 
 date. I happen to be worth eighteen mil- 
 lion dollars." 
 
 "Dollars?" repeated the Governor-Gen- 
 eral, puzzled. "What would that be in 
 piasters ?" 
 
 "It's a shame to tell you. Only about 
 four hundred million piastres, that's all." 
 
 "What!" exclaimed the Governor-Gen- 
 eral. "Surely you are joking. How 
 could one man be worth four hundred mil- 
 lion piasters?" 
 
 "Say, if you'll give me a pencil and 
 a pad of paper and about a half -day's 
 time, I'll figure out for you what Henry 
 Frick is worth in piasters and then you 
 would have a fit. Why, in the land of 
 
 154 
 
mOT Tlf 
 SUM 
 
 ready money I'm only a third-rater, but 
 I've got the four hundred million, all 
 right." 
 
 "But have you any social position?" 
 asked the Governor- General. "Any rank? 
 Any title? Over here those things count 
 for a great deal." 
 
 "I am Grand Exalted Ruler of the Be- 
 nevolent and Protective Order of Elks,'" 
 said the visitor calmly. 
 
 "Really!" 
 
 "I am a Knight Templar." 
 
 "A knight? That is certainly some- 
 thing." 
 
 "Do you see this badge with all the 
 jewels in it? That means that I am a 
 Noble of the Mystic Shrine." 
 
 "I can see that it is the insignia of a 
 very distinguished order," said the Gov- 
 ernor-General, as he touched it admir- 
 ingly. 
 
 155 
 
"What is more, I am King of the Hoo- 
 Hoos." 
 
 "A king?" 
 
 "A sure-enough king. Now, don't you 
 worry about my wealth or my title. I've 
 got money to burn and I can travel in any 
 company. The thing for us to do is to 
 get together and find a good husband 
 for the cripple, and fix up this whole 
 marriage deal. But before we go into it 
 I want to meet your daughter and find out 
 exactly how I stand with her." 
 
 "That will be unnecessary, and also im- 
 possible. Whatever arrangements you 
 make with me may be regarded as final. 
 My daughter will obey my wishes." 
 
 "Not for mine! I am not trying to 
 marry any girl that isn't just as keen for 
 me as I am for her. Why, I've seen her 
 only twice. Let me talk it over with her, 
 and if she says yes, then you can look me 
 
 156 
 
up in Bradstreet and we'll all know where 
 we stand." 
 
 "I am sorry, but it is absolutely con- 
 trary to our customs to permit a private 
 interview between an unmarried woman 
 and her suitor." 
 
 "Whereas in our country it is the most 
 customary thing in the world ! Now, why 
 should we observe the customs of your 
 country and disregard the customs of my 
 country, which is about forty times as 
 large and eighty times as important as 
 your country? Don't be foolish! I may 
 be the means of pulling you out of a tight 
 hole. You go and send your daughter 
 here to me. Give me ten minutes with 
 her. I'll state my case to her, straight 
 from the shoulder, and, if she doesn't give 
 me a lot of encouragement, I'll grab the 
 first train back to Paris. If she does give 
 me any encouragement, then you'll see 
 157 
 
what can be accomplished by a real live 
 matrimonial agency." 
 
 The Governor-General hesitated, but 
 not for long. The confident manner of 
 the stranger had inspired him with the 
 first courage that he had felt for many 
 weeks and revived in him the long-slum- 
 bering hope that possibly there was some- 
 where in the world a desirable husband for 
 Kalora. He was about to violate an im- 
 portant rule, but there was no reason why 
 any one on the outside should hear about 
 it. 
 
 "This is most unusual," he said. "If 
 I comply with your request, I must beg 
 of you not to mention the fact of this in- 
 terview to any one. Remain here." 
 
 He went away, and the young man 
 waited minute after minute, pacing back 
 and forth the length of the room, cutting 
 nervous circles around the big office chairs, 
 
 158 
 
wiping his palms with his handkerchief 
 and wondering if he had come on a fool's 
 errand or whether 
 
 He heard a rustle of soft garments, and 
 turned. There in the doorway stood a 
 feminine full moon an elliptical young 
 woman, with half of her pink and corpu- 
 lent face showing above a gauzy veil, her 
 two chubby hands clasped in front of 
 her, the whole attitude one of massive shy- 
 ness. 
 
 "I I beg pardon," he said, staring at 
 her in wonder. 
 
 She tried to speak, but was too much 
 flustered. He saw that she was smiling 
 behind the veil, and then she came toward 
 him, holding out her hand. He took the 
 hand, which felt almost squashy, and said : 
 
 "I am very glad to meet you." 
 
 Then there was a pause. 
 
 "Won't you be seated?" he asked. 
 
 159 
 
She sank into one of the leather chairs 
 and looked up at him with a little simper, 
 and there was another pause. 
 
 "I I never have seen you before, have 
 I?" she asked, with a secretive attempt to 
 take a good look at him. 
 
 "You can search me," he replied, 
 staring at her, as if fascinated by her 
 wealth of figure. "If I had seen you be- 
 fore, I have a remote suspicion that I 
 should remember you. I don't think it 
 would be easy to forget you." 
 
 "You flatter me," she said softly. 
 
 "Do I? Well, I meant every word of 
 it. Will you pardon me for being a wee 
 bit personal? Are there many young 
 ladies in these parts that are as as cor 
 pulent, or fat, or whatever you want to 
 call it that is, are you any plumper than 
 the average?" 
 
 "I have been told that I am." 
 160 
 
"Once more pardon me, but have you 
 done anything for it?" 
 
 "For what?" she asked, considerably; 
 surprised. 
 
 "I wouldn't have mentioned it, only I 
 think I can give you some good tips. I 
 had a Cousin Flora who was troubled the 
 same way. About the time she went to 
 Smith College she got kind of careless 
 with herself, used to eat a lot of candy 
 and never take any exercise, and she got 
 to be an awful looking thing. If you'll 
 cut out the starchy foods and drink noth- 
 ing but Kissingen, and begin skipping 
 the rope every day, you'll be surprised how 
 much of that you'll take off in a little 
 while. At first you won't be able to skip 
 more than twenty-five or fifty times a 
 day, but you keep at it and in a month 
 you can do your five hundred. Put on 
 plenty of flannels and wear a sweater. 
 161 
 
And I'll show you a dandy exercise. Put 
 your heels together this way," and he 
 stood in front of her, "and try to touch 
 the floor with your fingers so!" illus- 
 trating. "You won't be able to do it at 
 first, but keep at it, and it'll help a lot. 
 Then, if you will lie flat on your back 
 every morning, and work your feet up 
 and down- 
 She had listened, at first in utter amaze- 
 ment. Now her timid coquettishness was 
 giving way to anger. 
 
 "What are you trying to tell me?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "It's none of my business, but I 
 thought you'd be glad to find out what'd 
 take off about fifty pounds." 
 
 "And is this why you came to see me?" 
 she demanded. 
 
 ff l didn't come to see you" 
 
 162 
 
"My father said you were waiting and 
 he sent me to you." 
 
 "Sent you" replied Mr. Pike in frank 
 surprise. "My dear girl, you may be 
 good to your folks and your heart may 
 be in the right place, and I don't want to 
 hurt your feelings, but father has got 
 mixed in his dates. I certainly didn't 
 come here to see you" 
 
 As he was speaking Jeneka wriggled 
 forward in her chair and then arose. She 
 stood before him, heaving perceptibly. 
 
 "Your manner is most insulting," she 
 declared. She had expected to be show- 
 ered with compliments, and here was this 
 giggling stranger advising her to be thin ! 
 She toddled over to the door and pushed 
 a bell. Then she turned upon the be- 
 wildered stranger and remarked coldly: 
 "Unless you have something further to 
 
 163 
 
communicate, you may consider this inter- 
 view at an end." 
 
 A servant appeared in the doorway. 
 
 "Show this person out," said the portly 
 princess. 
 
 The servant gave a little scream. 
 
 "Mr. Pike!" 
 
 "Kalora!" 
 
 And then he was holding both her 
 hands. 
 
 "You are here here in Morovenia? 
 You came all the way?" 
 
 "All the way! I'd have come ten times 
 as far. Before I left New York I heard 
 about all those messenger boys hunting 
 me around the hotels, but I didn't know 
 what it meant. When I got back to 
 Washington I found your note, and, as 
 soon as I could get Congress calmed 
 down, I started got in here last night." 
 
 "But why did you come?" 
 
 164 
 
nt SLI 
 
 "Can't you guess?" Mr. Pike wasted 
 no time in circumlocution. 
 
 During this hurried interview Jeneka 
 had been holding a determined thumb 
 against the electric button. The Gover- 
 nor-General, waiting impatiently up the 
 hallway, heard the prolonged buzzing and 
 came to investigate. He found the ador- 
 able Jeneka, all trembling with indigna- 
 tion, in the doorway. She saw him and 
 pointed. He looked and saw the distin- 
 guished stranger, the man of many titles 
 and unbounded wealth, standing close to 
 the slim princess, holding both her hands 
 and beaming upon her with all of the un- 
 mistakable delirious happiness of love's 
 young dream. 
 
 "What does it mean?" asked the Gover- 
 nor-General. "Is it possible 
 
 "He was rude to me," began Jeneka* 
 "He was most insulting " 
 
 165 
 
Mr. Pike turned to meet his prospect- 
 ive father-in-law. 
 
 "You meant well, but you got twisted," 
 he remarked. "This is the one I was 
 looking for." 
 
 At first Count Selim Malagaski was too 
 dumf ounded for speech. 
 
 "Are you sure?" he asked. "Can it be 
 possible that you, a man worth millions of 
 piasters, an exalted ruler, a Noble of the 
 Mystic Shrine, have deliberately chosen 
 this waspy, weedy " 
 
 "Let up!" said Mr. Pike sharply. 
 "You can say what you please about your 
 daughter, bu 4 ^ou mustn't make remarks 
 about the prospective Mrs. Pike. I don't 
 know anything about her local reputation 
 for looks, but I think she's the most beau- 
 tiful thing that ever drew breath, and I'd 
 make it stronger than that if I knew how. 
 
 166 
 
You thought I meant the fat one. Well, 
 I didn't, but I hope the agreement goes 
 just the same. And I'll stick to what I 
 said. I'll get the other one married off. 
 It may take a little time, but I think I 
 can find some one." 
 
 "Find some one?" cried Jeneka indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 "Find some one?" repeated her father. 
 "She has been sought by every young 
 man of quality in the whole kingdom. 
 How dare you suggest that " 
 
 Then he paused, for he was beginning 
 to comprehend that young Mr. Pike had 
 stepped in and saved him, and that, in- 
 stead of rebuking Mr. Pike, he should be 
 weeping on his breast and calling him 
 
 "son." 
 
 Jeneka came to her senses at the same 
 moment, for she saw her dream of five 
 
 Id? 
 
years coming true. She knew that soon 
 she would be the Countess Muldova. 
 
 Mr. Pike suddenly felt himself caressed 
 by three happy mortals. 
 
 "I shall make you a Knight of the 
 Gleaming Scimitar," said the Governor- 
 General. "I have the authority." 
 
 "Thanks," replied Mr. Pike. 
 
 "And we can have a double wedding, '* 
 exclaimed Jeneka, whose ecstasy was al- 
 most apoplectic. 
 
 "We shall be married in Washington," 
 said Kalora decisively. "I am not going 
 to be carted over to my husband's house 
 and delivered at the back door, even if it 
 is the custom of my native land. I shall 
 be married publicly and have twelve 
 bridesmaids." 
 
 "You may start for Washington imme- 
 diately," said her father with genuine en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 168 
 
"I shall need a chaperon. Send for 
 Popova." 
 
 "Good! His punishment shall be 
 permanent exile." 
 
 "Nothing would please him better," 
 said Kalora. "Over here he is nothing 
 in Washington he will be a distinguished 
 foreigner. Washington ! Washington! 
 To think that all of us are going back 
 there! To think that once more I shall 
 have pickles all the pickles I want to 
 eat!" 
 
 "We have over fifty varieties waiting 
 for you," observed young Mr. Pike ten- 
 derly. 
 
 "I have been thinking," spoke up the 
 Governor-General. "I shall apply to the 
 Sultan. He shall make you a Most Noble 
 Prince of the Order of Bosporus. The 
 decoration is a great star, studded with 
 diamonds." 
 
 169 
 
"Thanks," replied Mr. Pike. 
 
 That night the great palace at Moro- 
 venia was completely illuminated for the 
 first time in many months. 
 
 THE END 
 
IN OUR TOWN - 
 
I 
 
 THE ACTOR 
 
 EVERY town has an actor. We had one. 
 In fact, we have him now in the summer 
 time. Egbert is one of the birds that fly 
 away in the autumn and come fluttering 
 back in the spring. Several times he has 
 come back before spring. Lost his job? 
 Certainly not. He is either " resting or 
 reorganizing." As soon as he is thor- 
 oughly rested and altogether reorganized 
 he has Jim Frisby (the dairyman) haul 
 his battle-scarred trunk down to the sta- 
 tion, and away he goes on a new search 
 for glory. As nearly as we can learn 
 and we try to learn everything in our 
 town one of the Frohman boys has sent 
 
 for him. 
 
 173 
 
mCiT T1U 
 SUM 
 
 His full name, as printed on the trunk, 
 is Egbert Seyon pronounced Say-on. 
 Some name that. A good, juicy stage 
 name that would show up great on a 24- 
 sheet. Egbert has not burst into large 
 type as yet. He has not attained " stellar 
 distinction," if you know what that is, 
 but he will all right, all right, if Robert 
 Mantell and Otis Skinner will move over 
 to their own side of the track and not try 
 to keep him in a pocket. 
 
 It may not be generally known to the 
 play-going public, but Egbert Seyon's 
 real name is Ed Noyes. Many older mem- 
 bers of the I-knew-him-when Club, which 
 was chartered and organized right here in 
 our town, recall the fact that Ed once 
 delivered milk for the Simpson Brothers' 
 dairy. It is hardly fair to say that he de- 
 livered milk once. As a matter of fact, 
 he was allowed to get out twice. After 
 
 174 
 
each trip he came in with his vest pocket 
 full of red and blue tickets, but these did 
 not add up enough quarts and pints to 
 account for all the milk that had been 
 delivered. Ed never could get the differ- 
 ence between a quart and a pint straight 
 in his head. He was not dishonest, mind 
 you. Simply a case of artistic tempera- 
 ment. For a good many years since then 
 he has been getting the red tickets mixed 
 up with the blue tickets and giving pints 
 for quarts, and that is why he lands back 
 here along about cherry-picking time and 
 visits his married sister. 
 
 It's funny sometimes, how talent will 
 slumber in a small town and not be dis- 
 covered by the natives. Ed Noyes had 
 been somewhat of a reciter, but if any one 
 had predicted that in time he would be 
 with a real troupe and travel from town 
 to town it would have started a cackle, 
 
 175 
 
sure enough. One of the surest ways of 
 starting a cackle in our town is to suggest 
 that possibly some one born right here 
 will live long enough to overcome the 
 handicap. At " literary " meetings, Ed 
 used to spring that one about the Turk 
 that lay dreaming of the hour, when 
 Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, 
 should tremble at his power. During the 
 blue-ribbon upheaval he gave us the piece 
 about the young man in the open boat 
 who refused to heed the friend who stood 
 on the bank and shouted, " Young man, 
 ahoy! The rapids are below you! " 
 
 It is one thing to stand up in a cutaway 
 coat and recite, and another thing to act 
 out on a real stage. Ed really was dis- 
 covered by the Chicago actor who came to 
 put on the home talent show. This sure- 
 enough actor, whose name was Cyril Wil- 
 bur, said that Ed possessed " histrionic 
 
 176 
 
ability of a very high order " those were 
 his words. 
 
 We became involved in amateur theatri- 
 cals because the band boys needed some 
 new uniforms. " Our Boys in Blue " was 
 the name of the play. The plot revolved 
 rapidly around a love affair in which a 
 brave Union soldier and a Confederate 
 spy, who talked through his teeth, were 
 contending for the hand of a heroine who 
 was very pale, and kept saying, " My 
 God! " all through the play, much to the 
 alarm of some of the regular church 
 members. 
 
 When Ed walked out on the stage that 
 night we didn't know him at first. His 
 eyebrows were very black and had been 
 extended until they were shaped like cro- 
 quet arches. His lips were cherry-red, 
 and his cheeks carried the bloom of youth. 
 Although he had just emerged from battle 
 
 177 
 
mni Tif 
 SUM 
 
 he looked very clean and natty. Any one 
 could tell at a glance that he was a hero. 
 In the love scenes he used a tremolo of 
 which he had not been suspected up to that 
 time. During the court-martial scene he 
 shifted to the loud pedal, and when he 
 finally denounced his accusers and de- 
 clared his allegiance to the old flag, he 
 rattled the chandeliers. Children in arms 
 became frightened and had to be hurried 
 to the ante-room. The curtain fell on an 
 outburst of yelps and whistles from the 
 boys in the elevated seats. It was what 
 the paper called an " ovation." Anyway, 
 it was the undoing or the making of Ed 
 Noyes, all depending on the point of view. 
 Next day he walked up Main street, 
 accompanied by a new glamour. It was 
 agreed that he was the " best one in the 
 show," not excepting the Chicago actor, 
 who played the spy. The court of last 
 
 178 
 
1E.SH 
 
 resort, in front of the hardware store, 
 decreed that he was " better than most 
 regular actors." Ed had himself photo- 
 graphed in costume and tried to appear 
 unconscious of his local eminence when 
 the school children walked close behind 
 him and recalled, in loud and disputatious 
 tones, the more stirring incidents of the 
 drama. 
 
 The play was repeated at Spencerville. 
 In his review of the performance, the edi- 
 tor over there said: "The part of the 
 hero was taken by Mr. Noyes, who more 
 than deserves the name inherited from 
 his parents." Of course, you grasp the 
 editor's meaning: Noyes Noise. It 
 might be explained that Spencerville fully 
 expected to get the hub and spoke factory 
 that moved out from Indianapolis to our 
 town in order to improve the social condi- 
 
 179 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 tions surrounding employees. Also, to 
 get cheaper labor. 
 
 I will say this for our town : Although, 
 as a rule, we are ready to throw dornicks 
 at any one within the corporate limits who 
 begins to exhibit hifaluting aspirations, 
 the attack on Ed Noyes certainly did stir 
 up a lot of feeling. Just because we got 
 the factory was no reason why Spencer- 
 ville should open up on Ed Noyes. We 
 hastened to assure Ed that the editor was 
 prejudiced, and the band boys gave him a 
 watch-fob. In our efforts to soothe him 
 probably we laid it on a little too thick. 
 Besides there was no need of working up 
 any sympathy for Ed. The Spencerville 
 criticism never touched him at all. He 
 was a regular actor from the start. He 
 (was good and he knew he was good, and 
 anybody who didn't think so was simply 
 
 180 
 
to be pitied for his ignorance and dropped 
 into the discard of oblivion. 
 
 Ever since the first night in K. P. Hall, 
 Ed has been absolutely sure that he is a 
 great actor. He doesn't think that he is 
 fairly good or feel reasonably convinced 
 that he has traces of talents. He knows 
 that he can play any part ever written bet- 
 ter than any other man who ever walked 
 out on a stage. Of course, when a man is 
 sustained and fortified by that kind of 
 sublime confidence, you may knock him 
 down and walk on him a thousand times, 
 but he will continue to bob up and demand 
 attention. 
 
 Local tradition has it that Ed never did 
 an honest day's work after he made his 
 first hit as " Lieutenant Paul Hethering- 
 ton, nature's nobleman." For a month 
 he basked in the sunlight of local popular- 
 ity, giving out photographs and wearing 
 
 181 
 
TIE SLIM 
 
 his watch-fob, and then he did just what 
 we knew he was going to do he went 
 away with a traveling troupe. It was the 
 Mae Sylvester Company, playing " The 
 Queen of the Ranch." Rumors flew thick 
 and fast the day after Ed went away, but 
 they seemed to sift down to the fact that 
 he was getting fifteen dollars a week for 
 playing an Indian. 
 
 He changed his name when he went 
 with Mae Sylvester. " Egbert " was cer- 
 tainly an improvement on Ed. To use the 
 name " Noyes " would be hanging a bait 
 in front of every would-be Willie Winter 
 of the wild and woolly west. At the 
 same time, he didn't like to abandon a 
 family name that had been honored ever 
 since the Civil War. So what did he do? 
 He took Noyes and spelled it backward 
 and got Seyon, which sounds fancy and 
 
 182 
 
TOSH 
 
 unusual, and just fits the end of a 
 trunk : 
 
 * EGBERT SEYON * 
 
 * Theatre * 
 ********** 
 
 He thought some of taking Garrick or 
 Booth and Mansfield, but all of them had 
 been used before by other actors. His 
 sister, Mrs. Rush Thornton, was really 
 the one who suggested " Seyon." She had 
 used that name in carrying on a flirtatious 
 correspondence with a traveling man be- 
 fore she married Rush, getting her mail at 
 the general delivery. It seems that a good 
 many of the girls around town learned the 
 trick of spelling their names backward in 
 order to mystify the handsome gentlemen 
 whose names were taken from the hotel 
 
 183 
 
TESL1M 
 
 register. Ella Porter carried on a daring 
 intrigue with the name of Retrop, and 
 Lulu Robinson called herself Nosnibor; 
 although it doesn't seem possible that you 
 could fool even a traveling man with a 
 name like that. 
 
 About a month after Egbert went away 
 with Mae Sylvester he landed back among 
 us. His trunk came a few days later. 
 You never saw such a change in a man. 
 He was paler, for one thing. He looked 
 all the time as if he had just shaved him- 
 self and used a little more talcum powder 
 than was absolutely necessary. His hair 
 never had been curly, but now it seemed to 
 kink up a little at the ends, like fish-hooks. 
 He wore a big cravat tied in a loose bow, 
 and he talked as if he had a cold not a 
 bad cold, but something slightly bronchial, 
 the kind preachers have all the time. He 
 carried a cane with a metallic knob on it, 
 
 184 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 and I think I am safe in saying that his 
 " spats " were the first ever seen in our 
 town. We couldn't see the object of 
 spats. They looked as if something had 
 been slipped down and was hanging over 
 the shoe. 
 
 We never figured out just what hap- 
 pened to the Mae Sylvester combina- 
 tion but it was something that involved 
 treachery on the part of the treasurer, and 
 non-payment of salaries. Egbert, accord- 
 ing to his own admission, had been trium- 
 phantly successful in the small part 
 alloted him. He had started a scrap-book, 
 and I recall that a paper in Urbana, Ohio, 
 said: " Egbert Seyon, as the Indian, was 
 adequate." This meant more than you 
 might think, for Egbert explained that 
 the critic was known as the Alan Dale of 
 Urbana. 
 
 Every Thursday morning Egbert 
 
 185 
 
would go down to the post-office and get 
 a dramatic weekly. He stood on a corner 
 to read it, and turned the pages with a 
 cold, professional air of languid interest. 
 In August he cashed a frugal check signed 
 by his brother-in-law (we find out about 
 these things in our town), and went to 
 New York. Since then he has been a New 
 Yorker. He puts in most of his time here, 
 while resting or reorganizing, but his home 
 is New York. " Egbert Seyon, New 
 York City," that's how it appears on the 
 register. He remains here for weeks at 
 a time, but somehow we feel that we are 
 holding him in exile. When he speaks of 
 " little old New York " there is a note of 
 longing in his voice, and more than once 
 this summer, as we lined up in the arm- 
 chairs along the front of the Commercial 
 Hotel, we have heard Egbert say: " Gee, 
 I'd like to be on old Broadway to-night." 
 
 186 
 
ffiSLI 
 
 We used to think that when he arrived on 
 Broadway many flags were hung out of 
 the windows and more electric lights were 
 turned on, but some of the folks who at- 
 tended the Hudson-Fulton celebration re- 
 port that they saw Egbert standing on a 
 corner with several other men wearing the 
 same kind of almost-Panamas and a sort 
 of towel instead of a collar, and that a 
 policeman rapped on a brass sign and told 
 them to keep moving and not block the 
 street. 
 
 187 
 
II 
 
 THE HOLD-OVER 
 
 You take a town of about fifteen hun- 
 dred population, except in the census re- 
 ports, and bear in mind that the residents 
 can devote anywhere from six to twenty- 
 four hours each day to comparing notes 
 and keeping tab on the neighbors, and it 
 is evident that very few essential facts get 
 by. Boswell knew a lot about Johnson, 
 but we have people right in our town 
 who know so much about other people 
 here, that if they ever wrote it all out and 
 put it into a volume, BoswelFs celebrated 
 work would look like a scattering of foot- 
 notes, and Webster's Unabridged Dic- 
 tionary would dwindle to the comparative 
 
 insignificance of a hand-book on bridge- 
 188 
 
whist. But, of course, they never will 
 write it out, because they can't spare the 
 time from their regular detective work. 
 
 We are long on biographical data. 
 Family skeletons a specialty. We don't 
 talk much about the black sheep that wan- 
 dered away into the underbrush, but we 
 know all about them. We can give you 
 a list of automobile owners who have mort- 
 gaged their homes, and can tell why 
 Elmer Wilson gave up his job in the bank 
 and name the exact amount that it cost 
 Frank Talbot to get his son-in-law back 
 from South Dakota. But I'm blessed if 
 even the most expert eavesdropper, news- 
 monger and inquisitor in the whole place 
 can tell you the exact age of Mattie 
 Buskirk. 
 
 Mattie does not claim to be a springer. 
 She blithely refers to herself as an " old 
 
 maid," and provokes laughter at every 
 189 
 
wedding by telling how many times she 
 has caught the bride's bouquet and then 
 waited in vain. Mattie has grown old 
 courageously, but the tantalizing truth is 
 that no one can tell how old she has grown. 
 Somebody has tampered with the records. 
 There is plenty of speculative conversa- 
 tion but no absolute proof. 
 
 In the evening, with her hair done up 
 in a certain way and the lights striking her 
 at the proper angle from behind, she looks 
 to be about twenty-six. Her friends say 
 66 somewhere in the thirties." Seven or 
 eight married women, who used to run 
 around with her before they were dragged 
 to the altar, and who now find themselves 
 seated in the dim background, waiting for 
 the grandchildren to arrive, declare that 
 " Mattie is fifty if she is a day." Uncle 
 Jim Trimble testifies that after the sur- 
 render of Lee, when the home company 
 190 
 
got off the train and marched from the 
 depot to the grove, Mattie Buskirk stood 
 in front of the old Woods Hotel and 
 waved at the troops. She was young at 
 the time, and wore a blue dress. Nobody 
 believes Uncle Jim, and a good many 
 doubt the married women, but there is no 
 concealing the fact that Mattie is pretty 
 well advanced in years for a mere girl. 
 
 The family Bible has disappeared and 
 the relatives have been fixed. About as 
 near as we can come to getting any real 
 evidence is this : It can be shown by news- 
 paper files that during the Garfield and 
 Hancock campaign of 1880, Mattie rode 
 on a float in the ratification parade and 
 impersonated the Goddess of Liberty. 
 That was thirty years ago. Assuming that 
 a girl would have to be at least fifteen 
 years of age in order to look anything like 
 a real goddess and sit on a high throne 
 
 191 
 
non 
 
 surrounded by the states of the union, the 
 evidence would seem fairly conclusive that 
 Mattie is now hovering around the forty- 
 five mark. But if you ask Mattie about 
 politics you will find that she has only a 
 hazy recollection of anything preceding 
 the free-silver crisis of 1896. Occasionally 
 some woman who knows how to use the 
 stiletto in a friendly fashion will go after 
 Mattie and try to show up her antiquity. 
 For instance, Mrs. Art Beardsley, who is 
 chief veteran in division No. 1 of the 
 Drooping Married Women, spoke up at a 
 club meeting one day and said: " Oh, 
 Mattie, will you ever forget our trip to 
 Chicago in 1883 to see Booth and Bar- 
 rett?" 
 
 That's going back twenty-seven years, 
 all at one jump. Mattie did not falter. 
 She said she remembered it that is, she 
 
 remembered being in a theatre with lights 
 192 
 
TESI 
 
 and music and many people, but she had 
 forgotten the name of the play. 
 
 "Were you there?" she asked Mrs. 
 Beardsley. 
 
 " I was," replied Mrs. Beardsley, with 
 as much frigid dignity as she could gen- 
 erate on short notice. 
 
 "Of course you were ! " said Mattie, in 
 her most sparkling manner. " I remem- 
 her now I sat on your lap all evening." 
 
 While Mrs. Beardsley was recovering, 
 Mattie shifted to a discussion of Elbert 
 Hubbard, and sailed out of danger. 
 
 Mattie gets a lot of sympathy, espe- 
 cially from the men. The enthusiasm of 
 the women is slightly modified. The older 
 ones, from whom all girlish gayety has 
 evaporated in the dry atmosphere of 
 routine married life, find it difficult to 
 derive any real enjoyment from watching 
 
 Mattie carry on flirtatiously with their 
 193 
 
husbands. Every middle-aged husband in 
 town is more or less of an ex-beau to 
 Mattie. Also, it is believed that a man 
 often nurses a wistful regard for the 
 woman that he circled around but didn't 
 marry. There is a might-have-been at- 
 tractiveness about her, especially if she re- 
 tains her youthful charm and makes him 
 aware of it when they get together at a 
 whist party. Mattie will never be really 
 popular with the married women until she 
 settles down. As for the girls of the 
 younger set, they dread the competition 
 of one who has mastered all thirty-three 
 degrees of the mysteries of man-taming. 
 Just now we have in our town a brood of 
 collegians. They come home in June 
 from the colleges and academies, every one 
 of them trying to look like a Yale student 
 of the most devilish type. With their 
 undersized hats and amplified trousers, 
 
 194 
 
THE SLIM 
 
 their Greek-letter badges and throbbing 
 hosiery, their sun-baked arms and waving 
 forelocks is it any wonder that we are 
 fairly proud to claim them as our boys? 
 Well, Mattie rounds them up just as she 
 rounded up their male parents several sea- 
 sons ago. All during the past summer her 
 front porch probably had the largest aver- 
 age attendance of any in town. The buds 
 say that she is a shameless " jollier," and 
 the undergraduates themselves poke fun 
 at her on the quiet, but, just the same, 
 you will seldom find her hammock hang- 
 ing idle on a pleasant evening. 
 
 Does Mattie remain single from choice? 
 Was the romance of her life snuffed out 
 when the handsome photographer moved 
 away from here fifteen years ago? Or is 
 it true that every man is just a little bit 
 afraid of the woman who outpoints him 
 in cleverness? Does he shrink from sug- 
 
 195 
 
gesting a partnership in which he can see 
 himself for all time acting as No. 2? Or 
 does Mattie, in her eagerness to land them, 
 reel in too soon? 
 
 These questions are variously answered. 
 We only know that Mattie began to have 
 beaux away back in the days of chignons 
 and cardboard mottoes and embroidered 
 hat-linings. Her first devoted caller wore 
 spring-bottom trousers, used oil on his hair 
 and brought candy conversation hearts 
 with him when he came to call Sunday 
 evening. The years have come and gone, 
 and the new century has engulfed us in 
 bewildering changes. Everything has 
 changed except Mattie. She is still the 
 most popular girl in town. Like Peter 
 Pan and Sara Bernhardt and H. Rider 
 Haggard's " She," our village belle re- 
 fused to let the years be counted. She has 
 lived to witness the complete cycle from 
 
 196 
 
TIE SUM 
 
 the hoop-skirt to the hobhle-skirt. Five 
 years from now she will still be two 
 months ahead of the fashion plates. She 
 began with straw rides and bob-sleds and 
 moved on through the time of side-bar 
 buggies and tandem bicycles, and now she 
 takes to the red touring car with girlish 
 eagerness. 
 
 Within the span of her social career the 
 square dances disappeared, the military 
 schottische and the polka gave way to the 
 Boston dip, and now she prefers the barn 
 dance to the two-step. 
 
 She has read her way up from Mrs. 
 Southworth to George Barr McCutcheon, 
 and has shifted her sheet music over every 
 hurdle between "Maggie May " and what- 
 ever Nora Bayes happens to be singing 
 this week. 
 
 Mattie is adaptable always a little 
 ahead of the parade. That's why she has 
 
 197 
 
lasted so long. After all, why pity her 
 because she never selected one man from 
 the endless procession and dropped out of 
 the game? She is still young, if not alto- 
 gether blooming, apparently cheerful and 
 still going on the third speed. 
 
 198 
 
Ill 
 
 THE PROVIDER 
 
 You have heard of the woman who went 
 all the way through the woods and then 
 picked up a crooked stick. It is a sad 
 case. But there would be no sense in 
 wasting a lot of sympathy on the woman 
 if, after picking up the crooked stick, she 
 went serenely happy on her way, thinking 
 she had picked up a cord of wood, and 
 mahogany at that ! 
 
 Probably every one in our town, except 
 Mrs. Orville Grigsby, is convinced that 
 Mrs. Orville Grigsby has a pretty hard 
 time of it. She is supposed to be up 
 against it. She has Orville on her hands. 
 She calls him Orville, but most people call 
 
 199 
 
THEM 
 
 him " Orve," and some of the women call 
 him a " big lazy lummox." I don't know 
 just what a lummox is, and the name does 
 not often come up in print, but whatever 
 it is Orville is one of them. 
 
 In order to make the Grigsby case clear 
 to you, we will have to go back a little. 
 Along about 1885, Jennie Hinkle was the 
 most popular girl in our town, with the 
 possible exception of Mattie Buskirk. 
 Sometimes a girl has to pay a high price 
 for being popular. 
 
 Either of these local queens might have 
 sung in the immortal words of Henry 
 Blossom: 
 
 " I never could see any fun 
 In spending all my time on one." 
 
 In other words, they were fussers. 
 They were entirely surrounded by mem- 
 bers of the opposite sex. In doing the 
 200 
 
grand-right-and-left through the mazy 
 dance of youth it was only natural that 
 they should change partners occasionally. 
 Jennie and Mat tie could welcome the com- 
 ing and speed the parting guest with all 
 the professional skill of an experienced 
 college widow. Both of them pursued 
 this exciting pastime until they came to 
 be classed as syndicate attractions and not 
 subject to private ownership. As a re- 
 sult, Mattie is still our principal fusser 
 and Jennie is supporting Orville Grigsby. 
 
 Any woman who lived in our town 
 twenty years ago can sit down and, by 
 some counting on her fingers, and squint- 
 ing, and looking up into the air, give you 
 the names of twenty men who wanted to 
 marry Jennie Hinkle. 
 
 One name in the list will surprise you, 
 because even you folks who live in the big 
 
 towns have heard of him. If our burg 
 201 
 
IE Mi 
 
 ever gets on a real map it will be on ac- 
 count of James K. Wellaby, vice-presi- 
 dent and something-or-other of the B. L. 
 & K. railway. He was born right here, 
 attended our public schools and learned to 
 be a telegraph operator in the old depot 
 that is now used as a freight station. 
 After he got to be an agent and was pull- 
 ing down $45 a month, he aspired to the 
 hand of Jennie Hinkle and scored the only 
 failure of his meteoric career. He was 
 called away and promoted to the general 
 offices, and then promoted to something 
 else, and so on, until it seemed, from the 
 news coming back to us, that Jim was 
 kept pretty busy resigning jobs and ac- 
 cepting bigger ones. Nobody around here 
 ever picked Jim for a coming Napoleon, 
 but now that he has made good we claim 
 him as our kith and kin. Two years ago 
 
 he came through here in his special car. 
 202 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 It was like the last chapter of a Sunday 
 School story-book the poor but honest 
 country lad returning to his dear old home 
 as a Great Business Man. We have sent' 
 a good many up to the city. Some came \ 
 back in box cars and some never came \ 
 back at all. Jim is the only one who ever / 
 returned in a varnished car a half block / 
 long with three Ugandas to wait on him. / 
 
 His visit helped to remind us of the 
 appalling fact that if Jennie Hinkle had 
 said " Yes " instead of laughing and run- 
 ning away, she would now have a large 
 stone house with an iron fence around it, 
 ride in a padded limousine, and be order- 
 ing gowns and jewels instead of oatmeal 
 and prunes. For, if you must know the 
 whole truth, Jennie is now conducting a 
 boarding-house in order to permit Orville 
 to live in the manner to which he had not 
 been accustomed. 
 
 203 
 
If ever a woman had a right to brood 
 over her might-have-been history and 
 carry through years of silent suffering a 
 great and aching grief that woman is Mrs. 
 Orville Grigsby, nee Jennie Hinkle, as 
 the editor of the " Advocate " would 
 put it. 
 
 A good many women draw blanks, but 
 some blanks are bigger than others. If 
 there could be any grading, probably Or- 
 ville would be classed as the capital prize 
 among the blanks. He is a 33rd degree 
 blank, while the ordinary squaw man is 
 only the Blue Lodge. If the non-work- 
 ing husbands who wear boiled shirts and 
 eat heartily three times a day ever form a 
 national organization in order to protect 
 their rights and keep down competition, 
 Orville will be elected president by ac- 
 clamation. 
 
 He is everything that a professional 
 
 204 
 
husband should be. A prima donna's hus- 
 band has a fairly soft job, but then he has 
 to buy the sleeping-car tickets, and, be- 
 sides, he is expected to watch the show 
 every night and applaud at the right time. 
 The designing wretch who weds the 
 homely heiress gets his punishment, for he 
 has to sit up nights and count money. 
 But there are no drawbacks to Orville's 
 job. He has no set and regular duties 
 except to continue to be the husband of 
 Mrs. Grigsby, wear his dark suit with the 
 onyx sleeve-buttons and discuss with other 
 learned minds the question as to whether 
 or not T. R. can come back. 
 
 It must not be inferred that Orville 
 lacks a vocation. He is a solicitor of life 
 insurance and has printed cards, fur- 
 nished by the company, to prove it. When 
 Jennie Hinkle packed him up years ago 
 and took him in and gave him room and 
 
 205 
 
ffiSLI 
 
 board for life, he was acting as agent for 
 a nursery. Any one desiring fruit trees 
 could get them by hunting up Orville and 
 compelling him to take the order. After 
 that he had the county rights for a patent 
 churn that looked like a pianola and was 
 so beautifully polished up and had so 
 many flowers painted on it that the ordi- 
 nary farmer didn't feel worthy of asso- 
 ciating with it. He has been a real estate 
 agent, off and on, for fifteen years. In 
 order to be a real estate agent in our town 
 all you have to do is to get a map of the 
 county and put a card in the " Advocate." 
 A man can be a real estate agent and a 
 solicitor of insurance, holding down both 
 places simultaneously, and yet have all his 
 time to himself. In looking back over 
 Orville's career, it will be discovered that 
 he never undertook any employment that 
 required him to be at a certain place at a 
 
 206 
 
certain time. Of course, his service as a 
 juryman has been rather confining, but, 
 inasmuch as he is a regular at all trials 
 anyway, his willingness to take pay for 
 listening to the testimony is really a 
 tribute to his business judgment. 
 
 It is reported that if he can get some 
 one to demonstrate for him, he will be an 
 automobile agent next summer. 
 
 Orville will do anything that does not 
 involve physical exertion, sustained men- 
 tal effort or the observance of business 
 hours. He cannot afford to let sordid 
 commercial considerations come between 
 him and the croquet tournaments of the 
 golden summer time, or the checker con- 
 tests that enliven the dull winter season. 
 He will sit on the sharp edge of a one-inch 
 board for two hours to watch a ball game. 
 Also, he will act as presiding judge at a 
 quoit game, referee a horse trade, or go 
 
 207 
 
TO si 
 
 fishing. He is never idle, but he refuses 
 to work, if you can get the distinction. 
 
 Life has settled to a pleasant routine 
 for him. He leaves the house at 7:30 
 every morning, after Jennie has looked 
 him over and dusted him off and squared 
 the ends of his bow tie. He proceeds 
 along Third Street slowly but with dig- 
 nity, toward Hitchcock's drug store. His 
 mien is thoughtful and he looks at the 
 ground ahead of him, as if absorbed in the 
 judicial contemplation of some great 
 problem of life. He is trying to make up 
 his mind whether to go to the harness shop 
 and play " pitch," otherwise known as 
 " smear," or proceed to the undertaking 
 parlors and denounce Morgan. At Hitch- 
 cock's corner he greets the assembled fel- 
 low-workers in the realm of political 
 discussion with the grave condescension of 
 a U. S. Senator. He goes to the cigar 
 
 208 
 
THE SLIM 
 
 counter and purchases six medium blonde 
 perfectos from a box marked Old Glory. 
 His daily expenses are 27 cents. In ad- 
 dition to the cigars he buys a morning 
 paper. During the heated term he will 
 now and then drink a glass of a dark fluid 
 which is tolerated in temperance resorts, 
 but which, nevertheless, is said to be a 
 subtle stimulant and enlarges the intel- 
 lectual vision. If there is any truth in the 
 report, " Orve " ought to drink a barrel 
 of it. 
 
 From the drug store he moves toward 
 the post-office. Then out into the sunlight 
 again, and he pauses, undecided. An- 
 other day, fraught with splendid possi- 
 bilities, lies before him. Except that he 
 must assist two trains to get in and out of 
 town and read one paper from the Wash- 
 ington special clear over to the last rail- 
 road time-table, the precious hours are to 
 
 209 
 
be his own. He may indulge in cheerful 
 pastimes or engage in profitable debate 
 with other free-born Americans or he may 
 sit in the office of the Commercial Hotel 
 and watch the school children go by. 
 
 A stranger looking out of the car win- 
 dow at the straggling lonesomeness of 
 Main Street and the two rigs at the hitch- 
 rack might conclude that our town is dull. 
 To some, possibly, but not to Orville. He 
 is never bored and never complains of 
 ennui. We keep him interested and en- 
 tertained, and Jennie does the rest. 
 
 Her boarding-house is one of our prize 
 institutions. A good many drummers 
 would leave the Commercial and stop with 
 her, but, of course, she can take care of 
 only a few. With one girl to help her, 
 she takes care of six boarders, including 
 " Orve," and she must do fairly well in a 
 
 210 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 money way, because he is always well 
 dressed and has a row of Old Glory 
 perfectos peeping from his upper vest- 
 pocket. 
 
 Mrs. Grigsby has a side-line or two. 
 She sends away for flowers when there is 
 a wedding or a funeral, and gets a little 
 commission out of that. Also, she will 
 take orders for wall-paper. Her revenues 
 are not big, but she is a good manager, 
 and she is a wonderful provider. She 
 keeps Orville fat and well-curried, and is 
 confident that some day he will reveal to 
 the world those superior qualities which 
 she has always seen in him. Perhaps she 
 finds her happiness in mothering an over- 
 grown boy. If she has any regrets over 
 the Wellaby incident, she has kept them 
 to herself. She knows that Orville is the 
 
 paragon of all manhood, even if no one 
 211 
 
else is on to him. She wouldn't trade him 
 for any ordinary railway president. 
 Jennie is either a game loser or wonderful 
 actress, but, anyway, she refuses to be 
 known as a martyr. 
 
 212 
 
IV 
 
 EXPORTS 
 
 THE cruel city saps the rural communi- \ 
 ties of their youth and vigor and new 
 blood. That's right. Also, sometimes the 
 city saps a country town of its principal 
 saps, thereby making the whole deal a 
 stand-off. 
 
 Checking over the bunch that has moved 
 up to the big boiling metropolis within the 
 last twenty years, the debits about equal 
 the credits. 
 
 Of course, some of those who went lip 
 to the city and succeeded, and are now rid- 
 ing in taxis, would never have gone be- 
 yond $60 per month if they had lingered 
 in our midst. We wouldn't have gained 
 much by keeping them. In our town they 
 
 213 
 
HE SLIM 
 
 would have continued to be ordinary six 
 and seven-eighths types of mortal. They 
 needed the exhiliarating influence of rush- 
 ing traffic and the courage that comes 
 from falling in with a moving throng. 
 Some persons, as, for instance, politicians 
 and pickpockets, always seem to work 
 more effectively when there is a large 
 crowd present. 
 
 As for the failures, probably they 
 would have failed to a slower tempo and 
 with a background less brilliantly illumi- 
 nated if they had remained right here at 
 home. The fact is that a good many of 
 our local products who packed their tele- 
 scopes and hied away to the modern Babel, 
 didn't go for the purpose of making their 
 fortunes, as commonly suggested by ten- 
 cent magazines, but with the intention of 
 making an analytical study of rath- 
 skellers. 
 
 214, 
 
The city is called a bright light, toward 
 which the winged insects speed from the 
 far-away darknesses, in order to get prop- 
 erly scorched. The metaphor is not bad, 
 and the figure may be improved if we add 
 that some of these winged insects are 
 gnats and others are bats. 
 
 You know a good many people think 
 of the city as a kind of perpetual street 
 carnival and State Fair, where one may; 
 go to a different show every night and 
 where it is not necessary to put on gum 
 shoes and a mask and go up an alley in 
 order to take a drink. What's more, in 
 the city you can hear all the latest comic 
 and sentimental songs as soon as they 
 come out. Therefore, let us away to the 
 big town. 
 
 James K. Wellaby is vice-president and 
 all-around head man with the B. L. & K. 
 railway because he went up to the city for 
 
 215 
 
business and not for pleasure. We can't 
 get over the Jim Wellaby case. You 
 know, in every small town where boys are 
 running at large and exhibiting them- 
 selves, it is a favorite diversion to pick out 
 this or that boy and note the budding evi- 
 dences of greatness and map out a destiny 
 for him. 
 
 If a boy plants all his coppers in the tin 
 bank and rustles through back yards look- 
 ing for bottles to sell to the druggist and 
 skins the other boys on trades, people 
 naturally say : " He'll do a nice mortgage 
 and loan business some day and be ap- 
 pointed trustee of a university." 
 
 Ed Noyes was a Friday afternoon de- 
 claimer in his youth, and thereby gave 
 promise of his future career as an actor 
 with a repertoire show. 
 
 Ferd Billings kept hanging around the 
 livery stable, and we might have known 
 
 216 
 
that he would turn out to be a horse 
 trader. 
 
 Eugene Ellis was pale and well-be- 
 haved, with translucent ears, so it didn't 
 take much of a clairvoyant to predict that 
 the ministry would get him. 
 
 Baz Finkley would flip all the trains 
 and help unload the freight, and we knew 
 he would be a brakeman unless something 
 enjoined him. He is now shy a few fin- 
 gers, but you can tell by the coal-dust on 
 his neck that he is a sure-enough railroad 
 man. 
 
 As a rule, the forecasting is fairly accu- 
 rate, but there have been exceptions. One 
 was Jim Wellaby and the other was Ches- 
 ter Livermore. The Committee on Public 
 Safety and Court of Last Resort, that 
 held down the arm-chairs around the Com- 
 mercial Hotel, freely predicted a glorious 
 
 217 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 future for Chester, commonly known as 
 " Chet." 
 
 When he was four years old, he called 
 his father " Bill " and his mother " Liz- 
 zie," never failing to score a comedy hit 
 with either performance. At the age of 
 eight he could play a snare drum and talk 
 back to the oldest inhabitant came out in 
 long pants years ahead of the other boys. 
 Just naturally smart as a whip, that's all 
 you could say for him. 
 
 Jim Frisby often said that if " Chet " 
 escaped Congress he would get to be a lec- 
 turer in front of a side-show. He could 
 do " anything that he turned his hand to." 
 At twelve he wore a man's derby hat, and 
 could do the " Spanish Fandango " on 
 Steve Gardner's guitar in a way that made 
 all the other youngsters sit back and hang 
 their heads and sigh with envy. Smartest 
 boy that ever grew up in our town that 
 
 218 
 
was the verdict. Sharp as a hawk and 
 keener than chain lightning. Could letter 
 a sign, whittle a chain out of a stick of 
 wood, kill more rabbits and trap more 
 muskrats well, he simply was in a class 
 by himself. The other tikes were content 
 to follow his leadership and shine in the 
 reflected glory. 
 
 We knew that our town could not hold 
 Chester. His ambition demanded elbow 
 room. Across the waving fields of grain 
 came the siren call of the city, and 
 " Chet " went away from us one day 
 twenty years ago in a new suit of store 
 clothes, with a silk handkerchief peeping 
 from the breast-pocket and a long cigar 
 tucked in the side of his mouth, which was 
 not being used for conversation. 
 
 We expected to hear of him as presi- 
 dent of a trust company, but instead we 
 learned that he was taking tickets at a 
 
 219 
 
nickelodeon, and after that he became 
 thoroughly acquainted with the by-ways 
 of the metropolis by driving a night-hack, 
 and once, when he came home with a tem- 
 porary bank roll and a new line of slang, 
 he told us that he was a " sheet- writer." 
 You may know what that means. It has 
 something to do with a race-track. When 
 we heard later on that he was a " tout," 
 although he called himself a " betting 
 commissioner," the resident astrologers 
 began to revise the horoscope and cut out 
 the clause about Congress. 
 
 Well, the race-tracks have sprouted 
 with timothy hay, and " Chet " is assistant 
 pastry cook at a junction hotel somewhere 
 in Illinois. He can look right out of the 
 kitchen window and see Jim Wellaby go 
 by in his private car. 
 
 Jim and " Chet " grew up together, but 
 
 we were so busy watching " Chet " cut up 
 220 
 
didoes and repeating his brilliant observa- 
 tions on men and affairs that we didn't 
 pay much attention to Jim. He was a~l 
 quiet boy, with steady gray eyes and a / 
 wide, steel-trap kind of a jaw. His maniaj 
 for attending to his own business made 
 him practically a social outcast. He did 
 not trail in with the Livermore gang. 
 While the game of " two-old-cat " raged 
 on the common, he tinkered away in the 
 wood-shed and rigged up a telegraph in- 
 strument. He went to work in the depot 
 so as to learn operating, and then he got 
 to be agent, but we never thought much of 
 him as an agent. 
 
 An agent who expects to be popular 
 and make the depot a temple of good 
 cheer must yell at the trainmen when they 
 slide by, and josh the drayman, and throw 
 in a couple of jokes with every ticket. 
 
 Jim simply attended to his knitting and 
 221 
 
did his work, and never let any one get 
 yery thick with him, and, honestly, it was 
 a relief to the whole community when he 
 was transferred to the general offices. 
 
 Some of the business men had com- 
 plained to the company that Jim was very 
 short in his talk and bull-headed in his 
 ideas of collecting bills right on time, so 
 when he was removed they took the credit 
 for it and said it would teach Jim a lesson. 
 
 Just before Jim left, Jennie Hinkle had 
 turned him down cold and everybody 
 knew it, so between getting the mitten and 
 being transferred, Jim left under a kind 
 of a cloud. 
 
 We didn't know at the time that the 
 company ordered him up to the city be- 
 cause it was looking for men who were 
 short on humorous conversation and long 
 | pn systematic methods. We know it now, 
 
 because Jim has been going like a scared 
 222 
 
 * 
 
antelope ever since he escaped from us 
 and got out into the fair running. 
 
 You heard about his coming through 
 on the private car? He hadn't been back 
 to the town from the day he took the noon 
 train, with his sister, and nobody else, to 
 tell him good-bye. Talk about retribu- 
 tion with a large R! Talk about the 
 whirligig of Fate here in the land of op- 
 portunity! Some of the very business 
 men who had demanded his discharge, be- 
 cause he was not sufficiently " genial " 
 and " accommodating " were down at the 
 station in their Sunday suits to give him 
 an address of welcome and tell how grati- 
 fied they were that he had disappointed 
 them so keenly. 
 
 And say, when Jim walked out on that 
 observation platform and turned those 
 cold, metallic eyes on the flustered " re- 
 ception committee,'' with just a wrinkle 
 
 223 
 
mrT i\f 
 SUM 
 
 of a smile at each side of that steel-trap 
 jaw, and said in his most official tone, 
 " Gentlemen, I thank you " I wish a 
 good mind-reader could have been right 
 there to let us know what Jim really 
 thinks of our town. 
 
 Some people say he is going to build an 
 opera house here and call it " The Well- 
 aby." Also, a new hotel, to be called 
 " The Wellaby." We certainly need the 
 hotel; and several of ras can tell him 
 where to get an assistant pastry cook, 
 who is a good man when he is not 
 drinking. 
 
 224 
 
THE MISSIONARY 
 
 xX 
 
 THE small town has perked up a plenty - 
 
 in the last ten years. You can't sell us 
 paper collars any more no, not even cel- 
 luloid. The already-made tie with the 
 dingus for holding it under the collar and 
 the little elastic loop for lashing it firmly 
 to the bone collar-button, is now a pre- 
 historic relic found only in neglected 
 bureau drawers. 
 
 No more hand-me-downs. We have to 
 be measured and we pick out suits simi- 
 lar to those worn by the hatchet-faced 
 aristocrats on the back page of the uplift 
 weekly. 
 
 Progressive euchre is almost as anti- 
 quated as casino or muggins. Bridge- 
 
 225 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 whist is now played in our very best par- 
 lors, and on gala nights the local Belmonts 
 and Astors show their shoulder-blades and 
 shirt-fronts in a manner almost metropoli- 
 tan. At present we are all agog over a 
 brand-new game called " Rum." It 
 sounds wicked, but it is really one of the 
 politest cut-throat games ever pulled off 
 in a parlor. Never heard of it? Well, 
 get busy. It is the latest wrinkle, and we 
 grabbed it before it got cold. 
 
 We have a new delicatessan store, with 
 liver sausage and at least three kinds of 
 cheese temptingly shown in the window, 
 and some of us who have traveled exten- 
 sively know how to pronounce " Camem- 
 bert." 
 
 Miss Winter has a trimmer come out 
 from the city to design toques and tur- 
 bans for our home-grown buds. Any 
 bright day you can see some wonderful 
 
 226 
 
upside-down, sugar-bowl effects, moving 
 swiftly about our streets with attractive 
 young women trying to hide under them. 
 
 Before you read these lines the hobble 
 will be a has-been. It has got around to 
 the dining-room Tessies at the Commer- 
 cial Hotel, which means that the death- 
 knell has sounded on upper Fifth Street. 
 
 We get all the new films at the Arcade 
 Theater, and our illustrated songs have 
 colored slides showing a theatrical-looking 
 Harvard man mussing up a glorious 
 blonde under a red tree in the pink moon- 
 light, just the same as you see it on Broad- . 
 way. 
 
 We would imagine ourselves right up 
 at the head of the parade and almost step- 
 ping on the heels of the snare-drummer, 
 if it were not for Flukie Trimble. Flukie 
 is one of the many that we have sent up 
 to the great city. He is a grandson of 
 
 227 
 
Uncle Tim Trimble, the one who fought 
 the battle of Antietam single-handed, as 
 nearly as we can gather from his own ac- 
 count of the slaughter. 
 
 Flukie works in a bucket-shop in Chi- 
 cago. No one around here seems to know 
 just what a bucket-shop is. The name is 
 ^isleading. A bucket-shop has nothing 
 / to do with tinware. It is a place where 
 imaginary farm products are sold to ex- 
 \ perts who wouldn't know the difference 
 \between a corn stalk and a Canada thistle. 
 Flukie marks on a blackboard the latest 
 market quotations on grain for May, Sep- 
 tember, December and so on into the 
 glimmering future. A lot of gentlemen 
 wearing spring overcoats in the winter- 
 time sit in arm-chairs facing the black- 
 board. Each of them has a stub of a lead- 
 pencil with which he computes rapidly, 
 on the back of an old envelope, how much 
 
 228 
 
IE SLIM 
 
 he could make by selling short 1,000,000 
 bushels of September wheat. The only 
 thing that blocks the deal is the fact that 
 he went broke three years before. 
 
 But to hear Flukie tell it, you would 
 think that he got Jim Patten on the 
 'phone every morning and told him how 
 to string his bets, and then had a quiet 
 confab with the Armour crowd just before 
 going out to lunch with Mr. Cudahy. 
 
 He does not come back to his humble 
 birthplace because he has an appetite for 
 our society. He comes to blind us with 
 the splendor of his apparel and engulf us 
 beneath the Johnstown of his newly ac- 
 quired vocabulary. 
 
 For one thing he has the monogram 
 habit. It has got him worse than cocaine 
 ever got anybody. On the handkerchief, 
 on the sleeve of the shirt, on the ankle of 
 the sock, engraved on the watchfob, and 
 
 229 
 
neatly twisted into a stickpin. Some day, 
 when he is wanted by the police, he will 
 have an awful time trying to get rid of his 
 placards. 
 
 He was here last week. He simply 
 blew in to take a peek at the old dump 
 and see how the boobs were making it 
 out in the dear old bean-patch. That was 
 the language he employed when speaking 
 of an enlightened community that toler- 
 ated him for twenty years and gave him 
 the rudiments of an education so that he 
 would know enough to mark up figures 
 on the blackboard. 
 
 " Of all the tanks ever dug up by Rand- 
 McNally, this is certainly the prize 
 whisTn post," he said, backing up against 
 the cigar case and gazing in pity at the 
 awe-stricken circle of natives. " What do 
 you rummies do out here to kill time? I'd 
 rather be a waste-paper box in old Chi 
 
 230 
 
than a big squash out here. This town 
 curls up and dies at nine o'clock every 
 night. That's right! They blanket the 
 chickens, take in the sidewalk, set the 
 alarm for 5 G.M., and then tear for the 
 feathers. In this town they work that 
 curfew gag on the old folks same as on the 
 kids. Notformuh! Not for little Elmer 
 McGinnis! They can't put me into the 
 hay at sundown. I want to stay up and 
 watch the light burn. I'm the gazabe that 
 helps close the rats-keller; Willie, the 
 night-hawk!" 
 
 Some one ventured to suggest that 
 probably Flukie, in moving about Chi- 
 cago, hit a " purty smart clip ! " 
 
 Flukie pleaded guilty as follows: 
 " Barney Oldfield can't hang nothin' on 
 me. You have got to have split seconds 
 to ketch my time. I go the first mile 
 in nothin'-flat. I go so fast that my ~1 
 
 231 
 
TE SLIM 
 
 shadow's about half a block behind me. 
 I telephone I'm comin', and then I'm 
 ^there before they get the telephone. And, 
 believe me, any time you want to get out 
 and aviate, that Chicago is some town. 
 Any time you want to burn a roll of cur- 
 rency you can always find somebody to 
 strike a match. It's a grand little town 
 if you're in right. If you know the real 
 Indians so you can give 'em the high 
 sign you can go as far as you like. But 
 if you're flyin' single, and your motor 
 stops, take it from me, kid, you'd better 
 glide gently back to mother earth and tear 
 for your private garage." 
 
 Part of the time we don't know just 
 what Flukie is talking about, but we 
 take a kind of groping and bewildered 
 pleasure in listening to his Arabian Night 
 stories of wicked gaiety in the big town. 
 From what he tells us, it appears that a 
 
 232 
 
great many prominent society women 
 there are pursuing him and writing notes 
 to him. 
 
 " I see this party first on the L train " 
 that's the way he begins. " She was 
 planted on the other side of the car, and 
 say! she'd robbed many a show window 
 to get that wardrobe. She was there with 
 the jinglin' harness, believe me! I kind 
 o' give her the eye an' she got me an' 
 come back with one o' them Jimmy 
 Archer signals, so that nobody else was 
 wise. I moved over and opened up a 
 small one-pound box of South Side con- 
 versation, and the next thing you know 
 our hero is walkin' up street with said 
 queen and has address written on cuff. I 
 had to go around and scratch on the door 
 a few times before I teased her out, but 
 say, I took her down to see a vawdvill 
 one night an' when she moved down into 
 
 233 
 
TE SLIM Kl 
 
 Section A wearin' them $2,000 worth of 
 clothes, everybody stopped lookin' at the 
 show and said, ' Hooray! Mrs. Palmer 
 is back from Europe ! ' Don't overlook 
 the fact that I was carryin' special scenery 
 myself. I was Gussied up in the real 
 Tuxede with the satin blazizums all over 
 the front and the gazump and the little 
 concertina hat. After the show, a couple 
 o' them hot sparrows an' a pint o' that 
 high-tariff water, with the band tearin' off 
 the ' Grizzly Bear. 5 It's the life, boys! 
 Nothin' to it it's the life! " 
 
 He is equally frank and outspoken re- 
 garding his business prospects. 
 
 " I'm just pikin' along now," he will 
 say. " I cop out a thousand now and then 
 enough to keep me in cigarette papers. 
 I am just layin' back, that's all. I'm hep 
 to every play that's made, an' some bright 
 mornin' I'll jump in an' give that grain 
 
 234 
 
market a wallop that'll keep it dizzy for 
 many a long day. I've got a lot o' money 
 guys on my staff. When it comes time to 
 pull off the big show I'll be right there 
 with the cush. I'll have all the kale in 
 the world right at my elbow. Me with 
 all the mazume Lean handle with a scoop- 
 shovel. An' when I do put one of them 
 things across it'll be a case of * Good- 
 night, Miss Mitchell.' I'll get one o' them 
 red tourin' cars as long as from here to 
 there and I'll show Europe how to act 
 when the real fellow comes along. I've 
 got this market doped so it can't get away 
 from me. It's a stinch ! I'll have Ogden 
 Armour workin' for me in less than two 
 years. When people walk by the Board 
 of Trade, they'll say, ' That's his office- 
 right over there ! ' 
 
 Some of our simple villagers maintain 
 that Flukie is not the eminent Lotherio 
 
 235 
 
TESLi 
 
 that he claims to be, and that, as a young 
 Napoleon of finance, he will continue to 
 pull down $12 per week as a crayon art- 
 ist. Others believe the story about the 
 red touring car. If he gets it, we can 
 assure him a large and enthusiastic fu- 
 neral back in his beloved birthplace. 
 
 236 
 
VI 
 
 THE SQUIRE ^ 
 
 OUR esteemed President had com- 
 plained lately about the law's delay. 
 That is because the President does not 
 know Squire Hibben. When the ma- 
 chinery of justice begins to grind, with 
 the Squire's hand on the throttle and his 
 one sound eye fixed on the straight and 
 narrow path of duty, look out for results. 
 
 Somebody is going to be nicked, or 
 trimmed, or stood up, or shaken down for 
 $2.00 and costs, the total often amounting 
 to as much as $14.75. 
 
 This talk about the guilty escaping 
 does not apply to our town. Nobody es- 
 capes. It is almost as dangerous to be 
 innocent as it is to be guilty. 
 
 237 
 
imsa 
 
 Any man arrested and jerked before 
 Squire Hibben had better begin counting 
 out his money. 
 
 The Squire has a small cubical office 
 just back of the post-office. On the wall 
 is a map of the state. On the table is a 
 copy of the Revised Statutes. On the 
 floor is a box filled with sawdust. 
 
 Would you like to see the law being 
 applied without fear or favor? Then fol- 
 low along. 
 
 Homer Finkley has a dog. It is a con- 
 ventional small town dog part setter, 
 part pointer, and the remainder of the 
 escutcheon somewhat blurred. It is the 
 kind of dog that never suspected having 
 an ancestry, and if it did, it would try to 
 hush the matter up. 
 
 Tom Jimmison walks out of his back 
 door after a hot breakfast to inspect the 
 dwindling supply of anthracite and finds 
 
 238 
 
the Finkley dog, christened Hero for no 
 particular reason, snuffing and smelling 
 around his wood-shed. He is annoyed 
 by this brazen act of trespass and hurls a 
 piece of coal at Hero, and, strangely 
 enough, hits the target. 
 
 Hero establishes a new speed record 
 up the alley, running close to the ground 
 and emitting staccato yelps expressive of 
 physical agony nervous shock and acute 
 private humiliation. 
 
 Homer Finkley is standing at the end 
 of the alley, and wants to know what ails 
 Hero. 
 
 Then the Thornton boy, in a desire to 
 promote warfare, says that Tom Jimmi- 
 son lammed him with a piece of coal " so 
 big," indicating something larger than a 
 cocoanut and not quite as big as a foot- 
 ball. 
 
 Homer Finkley's emotional nature im- 
 
 239 
 
mediately goes to the boiling point. He 
 knows that he (Homer) and the other 
 members of the Finkley family are the 
 only persons who have a right to do things 
 to Hero. 
 
 He walks around on Third Street and 
 meets Tom Jimmison, who is on his way 
 to the elevator where he is employed to 
 weigh the loads and explain to the farm- 
 ers why the price of grain has gone to the 
 bow-wows. 
 
 Mr. Finkley opens up. 
 
 "Look here! What was your object 
 in tryin' to kill my dog? " 
 
 " Well ! What business did he have 
 snoopin' around my back yard? " 
 
 " That dog never harmed nothin' or 
 nobody ! My little girl plays with him by 
 the hour. That dog has more sense than 
 a lot of people I know." 
 
 " Got no business over in my yard." 
 
 240 
 
" Tom Jimmison, if I ever hear of you 
 harmin' hide or hair of that dog agin, 111 
 make your heels hit the back of your neck ! 
 Ill lay you across my knee and spank 
 you! Anybody that'll pick on to a dog 
 is a cheap, ornery, low-down, dol-derned 
 pin-head o' misery ! " 
 
 Think of being called a " pin-head of 
 misery!" 
 
 Homer Finkley is a big, rough Clydes- 
 dale, with an eighteen neck and corru- 
 gated hands. Tom Jimmison is a ninety- 
 pound imitation of what his parents hoped 
 would grow up to be a human being. 
 
 When you look at him you get merely 
 the disappointing impression of a pair of 
 spectacles and an Adam's apple. 
 
 Any personal encounter between the 
 two would conform to the general outline 
 of a battle between a colored chef and a 
 spring chicken. But, of course, Tom has 
 
 241 
 
to go through the motions of sustaining 
 his end of the argument, especially as the 
 Thornton boy is standing by, eagerly ab- 
 sorbing the details so that he can tell his 
 mother all about it and thereby get the 
 facts into general circulation. 
 
 So Tom wags his head and says, 
 " Homer Finkley, you'd better be a little 
 careful how you talk to me," and then 
 walks rapidly away before losing his tem- 
 porary advantage. 
 
 As he passes down the street he is still 
 stunned and bewildered by the sudden- 
 ness and the ferocity of the attack on him, 
 and then, as he recalls, over and over, the 
 highly insulting language used by the 
 domineering ruffian, a white-hot wrath 
 and an aching desire to be revenged begin 
 to curl and writhe in his system. 
 
 What does he do? He pegs down the 
 street, breathing heavily through his nose 
 
 242 
 
TIE SUM 
 
 and slams into the law office of Buskirk 
 & Hooper. Ed Buskirk is busily en- 
 gaged, whittling a chain out of a solid 
 piece of wood, but he comes out from 
 underneath the shavings and listens to the 
 story of the outrage. 
 
 " I'd a' been justified in liittin' him," 
 explains Tom, " but I'm a man of peace. 
 I hold myself in. But I think it's my 
 duty to have the law on him. He's been 
 goin' around this town abusin' and bully- 
 raggin' people just long enough." 
 
 Tom's eagerness to secure a private 
 vengeance, in the name of the general 
 weal, seems to impress Lawyer Buskirk, 
 who compliments him upon his exhibi- 
 tion of unselfishness and says something 
 about pro bono publico. 
 
 " Did he draw any weepin? " asked 
 Lawyer Buskirk, with an open law-book 
 balanced on his knee. 
 
 243 
 
" No, and it's a blamed good thing for 
 him he didn't ! " exclaims Tom, the infer- 
 ence being that if Mr. Finkley had drawn 
 a deadly weapon, Mr. Jimmison would 
 have taken it away from him and then 
 broken both of his arms and both of his 
 legs by mere brute strength. 
 
 ' We can get after him for provoke," 
 suggests the lawyer. " We might sue 
 him for slander later on. Anyway, we 
 can bind him over to keep the peace." 
 
 Squire Hibben is just moving up into 
 the king row when Plaintiff Jimmison and 
 Attorney Buskirk enter the Temple of 
 Justice, each looking like an ambassador 
 with a declaration of war in his inside 
 pocket. 
 
 The checker game is forgotten. The 
 still pen begins to scratch upon the dusty 
 page. A messenger goes hot-foot in 
 
 244 
 
search of Uncle Jim Trimble, the con- 
 stable. 
 
 Now let the tocsin sound while the pale- 
 faced women hurry from house to house, 
 carrying the dread message. The swift, 
 inexorable, merciless Law of the Land is 
 about to overtake Homer Finkley! 
 
 See the solemn men moving toward the 
 tribunal, so as to be right there when the 
 jury is made up. 
 
 Homer Finkley is backed up to the 
 stove in the Commercial Hotel, telling 
 just what happened from start to finish 
 (and to hear him tell it, you might sup- 
 pose that the argument lasted not less 
 than three-quarters of an hour), when 
 Uncle Jim Trimble comes in from Main 
 Street and approaches him with no more 
 sense of importance than Grant had when 
 he faced Lee at Appomattox. 
 
 Mr. Finkley turns a little pale when he 
 
 245 
 
hears the words, " against the peace and 
 dignity of the people of the state," but 
 he recovers himself, and, after a brief 
 period of meditation, speaks as follows: 
 ' I must see my lawyer." 
 
 Certain corporation officers did the 
 same when their company was fined $29,- 
 000,000, but they never looked as serious 
 about it as Mr. Finkley did as he went 
 over to pull Mordecai Weaver out of a 
 \ pin-pool game and unload upon him the 
 \ crushing responsibility of the " case." 
 
 The small cubical building back of the 
 post-office is trying to repeat the perform- 
 ance of the Black Hole of Calcutta, with 
 tobacco smoke added. 
 
 Squire Hibben, looking like eight dig- 
 nitaries of the Hague tribunal condensed 
 into one, sits behind the Revised Statutes 
 and looks about him with a glazed and im- 
 partial eye. 
 
 246 
 
Twelve jurors, each trying to sit on his 
 shoulder-blades, listens while Tom Jimmi- 
 son tells of murderous threats and homi- 
 cidal gestures. 
 
 Then Homer Finkley goes on the stand 
 and tells how he met Mr. Jimmison, 
 whom he has known for years, and spoke 
 pleasantly to him. In the course of their 
 conversation he referred to the incident 
 of the dog, yet never did he overlook the 
 luminous fact that he (Mr. Finkley) was 
 a " gentleman." 
 
 Mr. Buskirk addresses the jury. He 
 begins with the firing of the first gun at 
 Lexington and works up to the heinous 
 attack on the character of his snow-white 
 client, and, although he doesn't say so, he 
 seems to favor the death penalty. 
 
 Mr. Weaver follows, and, without com- 
 ing down to precise details, suggests that 
 Mr. Jimmison has at some time or other 
 
 247 
 
poisoned a well, stolen the tombstone from 
 his mother's grave and pawned it for drink 
 money, to say nothing of striking a crip- 
 pled child in the head with a dull axe. 
 
 After the arguments, Chief Justice 
 Hibben instructs the jury. He says it's 
 a serious charge. The jury is to be gov- 
 erned by the law and the evidence. He 
 doesn't say that the defendant will have 
 to pay jury fees if found guilty, because 
 the twelve good men and true have been 
 sitting there for an hour figuring on what 
 they would do with the money. 
 
 Mr. Finkley is guilty. Everyone in 
 town, except Mr. Finkley, has known 
 that since early morning. He is bound 
 over to keep the peace. He pays for a 
 bond. He pays a fine. He pays his law- 
 \ yer. He pays the Court. He pays the 
 Constable. He pays the jury. 
 
 248 
 
IE SUM 
 
 Getting out of a justice court is like 
 getting out of a New York hotel. 
 
 That same afternoon, see Uncle Jim 
 Trimble going down to the grain elevator 
 with a folded paper in his hand. 
 
 He is on his way to arrest Mr. Thomas 
 Jimmison. The plaintiff is Mr. Homer 
 Finkley, who charges that Mr. Jimmison, 
 by attacking his dog, indirectly provoked 
 an assault. 
 
 Is Mr. Jimmison guilty? 
 
 He is. 
 
 249 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
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 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 APR 2 1936 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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